Chapters I stretched out on my back, feeling the rough texture of the roof shingles digging into my back through the thin flannel pajamas I was wearing. My gaze remained on the sky as I let out a small sigh, looking up at the stars, countless in number, dotting the sky like little holes punched in a black sheet of paper.
The faint breeze brought the scent of over turned earth from the fields in the distance the farmers had been plowing and planting today, the chill in the air was the last of the cold we would likely feel before spring came, which was a pity as I had always preferred colder weather.
It was three hours until midnight.
Three hours until I turned ten.
Three hours until the start of the day when the next batch of hopeful trainers would set out on the gym challenge.
Three hours until another year went by where I would wonder why the hell I was here in this place instead of in Elysium with my wife.
I used to be a solider, like my father and his father before him, and I later found out my grandmother was pretty bad ass too. I fought in wars, I watched good soldiers die, I killed and fought. I witnessed atrocities, met legends, saved a goddess. And that was only the start of my career.
I fought gods, I fought dragons, I fought horrors beyond imagining. I suffered and bled. I traveled through twisted realms of madness. I found love in song, I lost that love horrifically. I was promoted faster than nearly any before me. I made friends, I saw my life getting back to normal. I found love again, then that new love betrayed me and tried to kill me. I was presented an artifact crafted by a goddess.
I had friends I was closer to than anyone else in the world. I wielded one of six artifacts designed to seal away evil and bring harmony to the world. I found a new love in one whom I never expected. We was betrayed by those whom we should have trusted, and we watched our city burn for it. We sought revenge. I died. I became a monster. I watched the one I love become a monster. We slaughtered innocents. We lead armies. We committed atrocities. And in the name of saving those who had come to call me and mine evil, I betrayed my love.
I sealed myself in stone for centuries. My friends joined me despite my protests. We were freed in a new era. We met and fought foes from our past. I rampaged against new enemies, new evils, and a old bitch that had hidden all this time and had been fucking everything up. I found a short time of peace. I met my love again. We found forgiveness in each other and wed. We had had children, one that was ours and others adopted but no less loved.
I was felled by a new evil. I lost those closest to me. I was made a monster for the sole purpose of revenge. My love chose to do the same in order to save me. I watched as others managed what I could not and fell into despair.
My love feared I would reject her as she was.
That did not happen.
In my grief for the loss of those closest to me I traveled the world. I set out with others to protect the world. I destroyed undead, and demons, griffons, changelings,and other ponies. I fought things beyond anyone's belief and understanding. I journeyed, targeting anything and everything that might threaten any one I care about.
My love was taken from me by a lich. I met and fought and rampaged and destroyed to get her back.
And I did.
I watched my children grow old and die or vanish never to be seen again, to only hear second hand what had happened to them.
My love and I set out on a trip of our own, exploring the world. We took down dictators. We fought horrors. And for a while, we simply existed as nearly everyone we knew aged and died around us.
In the end we gave it up. We chose a time after centuries and centuries of living. We finally decided that we were done. There was no where in the world we had not been. We had seen and done it all, some times twice if we enjoyed it.
So we passed on. One last embrace before we faded to nothing. To join the souls in the after life, to move on to the next place.
There was darkness, I expected perhaps to become a star to look down on the world and watch as the last of those I knew moved on to join my love and I.
But then I woke up as this tiny little monkey thing and some asshole slapped my ass until I screamed.
I was born again. And this time it was as one of those long pig things we had become in the Dark lands while chasing Discord's rumors. Or less brightly colored versions of the ones in Sunset's stupid mirror.
They were called humans here.
Suffice to say it was quite beneficial for me that I was born again as a colt, errr baby here, as it took me quite a while to get used to walking on two feet rather than four hooves.
I was a unicorn before this... or well... I started as a unicorn, I have no clue what I was by the end of my life.
There's no real magic here. I've got balance issues from only having two legs. And the world was filled with these weird ass things called Pokemon.
My name is Jer'rahd Kaisur. And I'm a centuries old unicorn solider from another dimension trapped in the body of a nine year old human about to go out on his first pokemon adventure.
What the fuck even is my life?
TDR Presents
Author's Note
I have no idea if i plan to keep this here. As it is primarily a pokemon story, but this 9 year old human is going to keep reflecting back on his life as a warhorse from the SiS setting.
Also like some of my other spur of the moment ideas, no clue how much i will do with this.
Rock Type
A faint bonging sound filled the air, the church on the hill's bell tower sounding midnight. The existence of the church some what bothered me, after all the last church I had known about was run by a cult that tried to kill me and my friends and take over our position as my love's Generals.
That didn't go well for them. Or us really.
I shook my head sitting up. I really shouldn't complain. I willingly gave up my last life to move to the next. Granted I had expected to meet my friends and love again, though that hadn't happened.
Yet.
I smiled a little, showing more pronounced canines than most people had. Something I inherited from my grandfather.
That was the best thing about this. My family was alive still.
My grandfather wasn't a pokemon trainer. In fact most other pokemon tended to avoid him aside from my grandmother's team.
My grandmother was a war hero, in Galor any way, she even had the sword granted upon retirement to soldiers of merit.
Imagine my surprise when it was the same blade I used before I got the Waning Moon.
She was a dragon type trainer and she had her team with her. Oddly there were only five, and all of them were friendly with my grandfather when no other pokemon wanted anything to do with him.
Curious. I expected I knew the reason of course, but I wondered how it was done.
I wasn't dumb enough to bring it up.
An old picture of her in one of her scrapbooks showed her standing with her team holding the crushed and burned flag of some nation that no longer existed that had attack Galor years ago. There was her Dragalge, a Garchomp, Flygon, Dragapult, Dragonite, and a Goodra.
She didn't have the Garchomp any more.
Might explain my family's teeth to be fair.
My grandfather was a rather large man, though one with a legendary temper. He worked odd jobs around town and when he and my grandmother moved into town he built the house we live in.
He was well liked around town by the humans, less so by the criminal element. Word is when he was younger he took on three members of Team Rocket who came into town by himself, and beat the fool out of all three of them and their pokemon teams on his own.
When asked he looked smug, though my grandmother refused to let him stay that way long.
My father was a local cop after serving some time in the military, never really dealing with anything more than a few training skirmishes and displays of military pomp. When he quit he took his team and joined the local police. He only had an emboar and a talon flame, but he was quite skilled with them.
My mother..... she was still alive here to. But she had the same situation. She came from a rich family, and was somewhat frail. She met and fell for my father during some dress event the military and the nobles got up to.
When her family found out they disowned her and she and my father moved here to Kanto to live with his parents. My grandfather expanded the house and a few years later I was born.
My mother is physically frail and it was feared she would die in child birth with me, but she didn't and I actually have lived this long with parents and grandparents. Even her side of the family isn't as bad as they were in my other life. They hate my father, but they acknowledge that I exist. I'll even get gifts from them on my birthday, though I don't think they have ever visited.
My mother was a trainer who made it through the Galor gym challenges before she had to stop due to her health. Her main team is a Dewott she never managed to evolve all the way, a slowbro, a wingull, a febas she picked up recently she is trying to evolve, and the two eevee her parents gave her before she set out, now a Vaporeon and a Espeon.
The pair of them practically adopted me after I was born, though that was mostly due to the Espeon knowing I was odd.
Not to say my life is perfect. Some bad things followed me from my past life. I still have nightmares, bad ones. And when I was four my fear of deep water became very very noticeable. To a lesser extent my hatred of oranges has been noticed, but at the same time everyone thinks that's just me being a picky eater. Which is a little odd given I still follow the military mentality of eating everything put before me as there's no telling when my next meal will happen.
But back to the phobia. My parents took me to a specialist in phobias and he worked with me for a few sessions before deciding to pass me off to another expert.
This expert decided to go straight to immersion therapy by literally tossing me into the deep end of a pool.
Now I might have the mind of a extremely long lived unicorn warrior, but at the time I was also a five year old kid with no way to save myself, no clue I was going to be pulled out of the water either, as some guy I just met threw me into a pool after leading me away from my parents for his trick.
Evidently the panic and terror I felt was so bad that every psychic type pokemon from nearly two miles around felt it and appeared in the pool area, trained, wild, or other wise. They assessed the situation, rescued me, and proceeded to reduce said doctor to a corpse as well as level most of his office before most people even knew anything was happening.
The event was the talk of the town for months, and it was still brought up every so often. Occasionally a psychic type trainer will show up to check me out, though I don't have any rapport with any psychic types. Seems this was a bit of a one off.
Still that event had my moms two eeveeloutions hang around me that much more. I don't think I could even take a bath without the pair of them being there.
It was about that point I started to train as well. I was too relaxed and some jackass decided to toss the aquaphobic who couldn't fight back into the water. that wasn't going to happen again without a fight.
I put on a good bit of muscle and built my endurance up considerably. I even managed to talk my grandmother and father into some sword lessons.
Hands are amazing. I miss my horn, but holy fuck the things I can do with hands with a blade.
I don't expect them to give me a sword as most fighting is done with pokemon after all.
I mean I was still a kid. I wasn't going to throw around an onix or anything, but when I started school no one even considered bullying me. Those who decided to pick on others also found I wouldn't allow that I wasn't very fond of that either.
One child who decided that he was going to sneak in a caterpie to help with his bullying found out that while I might not have been strong enough to wrestle a machoke, I was more than strong enough to grab his caterpie by the tail and beat him with it.
The caterpie was treated at the poke-center, the kid had to go to the dentist, and I was brought before a large amount of angry adults to explain my actions.
Lucky for me I had a long history in my previous life of explaining my actions. All I had to do was counter question them about what might have happened had the kid brought in a weedle with poison sting rather than caterpie with string shot. The officals mulled over this for a while and the subject was dropped particularly with all the other kids on my side. Of course I was watched for a while after that, and my parents grounded me, but ehh, at least I wasn't expelled.
Not to say school was all fights and events, I spent a lot of time studying. My reading comprehension and mathematics were fairly high, but my geography skill was the same as everyone elses, and my grammar and writing was crap, I kept falling back to Equestrian grammar and it looked weird and wrong compared to the language here. hands were great, but i had spent too long using my horn or mouth it felt weird.
I made friends of course, but not like the ones I left, learning how to be a child again was hard, so I wasn't that good at it and I never got super close to anyone. Though I did get invited to birthday parties, sooo maybe I was popular? I don't know it's not something I ever bothered to think about, even with the kids I had in the past.
Dawn was rather outgoing after all, she got invited to everything.
So here I was, sitting on the roof of my parents house, awake in the early morning due to nightmares, with a phobia of deep water that bordered on manic and a Gym challenge to head out to in the morning.
And somewhere out there, might be the five individuals that I cared about more than any one else, save maybe my kids. Who might also be out there. Would they know me? Would I know them? Did they remember or was it just me due to some sort of cosmic stupidity?
No one in town was one of them. There wasn't any sort of connection or sign that I could tell.
And it's not like I looked that different.
A fairly buff ten year old with short ragged amber hair, slightly pale skin, and a left green eye with a right red eye.
That caused a stir as well. So much so that many of the older folk in the town were wary of me as being a stars cursed child. Too many problems, too many oddities about me and some old biddies start throwing holy salt at me to ward off evil.
So of course I played into that to fuck with them until my mom made me stop.
Grandpa thought it was funny.
“...Eeeeon......?”
I looked up at the soft call seeing a pair of pink ears poking up out of the window to my room below me on the roof.
“I'm fine Espeon. Just came out to look at the stars.” I called down softly.
The eeveeloution turned her head peering up over the arching sil over my window, her eyes narrowed at me as she huffed, she didn't like me being up here, though I didn't have a phobia of heights at all.
I rose and slid down the side of the roof to where she was poking out of my window glaring at me. She backed up and I dropped into my room with a small smirk, trying to defuse the glare before I reached out and ran my fingers under her chin.
“You need to stop worrying so much. Leave that to mom. I am gonna be leaving for a while later today.”
She frowned nipping my fingers in protest her large ears flattening to her head.
“Don't give me that you knew this was coming. And I also know you're upset you can't come with me. But you have your own eggs to take care of. Two of them too. Focus on your Eevees I'll be fine.” I offered getting another huff from her.
This was going to be a interesting trip. I don't think I had ever set out any where before with someone back home worried about me. At least not until after the Tirek incident, but that was different.
Perils of being a solider.
Rock Type
I looked at the pokeball I was given, then the read out on the pokedex I was given, then back up to the professor who handed them both to me.
The old man stared down at me one eyebrow raised. “Something wrong son?”
“Is this because I tormented your wife with with that demon child shtick years ago?” I asked simply.
The professor sighed. “ No Jer'rahd, it is not. Ponytaville is not that big of a town, so we don't get as much attention from the breeding farms. We only get enough pokemon for the number of kids we have starting the challenge. We have eleven this year heading out. Most of your class in fact that's more than three times our usual group.”
“This isn't even a starter.” I protested with a small huff.
“Not a normal one no. We only were given 2 of each with the Bulbasaur, Squirtile, and Charmander. So we had a drawing last night of names and six others of your age group gained those six. The remaining five of you had your names drawn for what was left. The rest came from a local breeder who moved here Prom Paldea, three nidoran, a geodude, and what you got. The only extra we have is a poliwag, would you prefer that one?”
I glared at him. My mothers Vaporeon aside, I did not like water types for obvious reasons. Particularly larger ones that would need deeper water to thrive.
“This is totally because of me tormenting your wife.” I grumbled as the professor rolled his eyes.
I headed out of the small lab set up in Professor Garret's house. He wasn't wrong, this was a small town with a big class of kids reaching 10 this year. I just managed to get in myself, and there were some kids who had been waiting ten months for this day to come. I lucked out by turning ten just at the right time.
I had hoped to get a bulbasaur. They were small and quick to start with, but they turned into brutal tanks when they evolved. I had even studied up on them. I was not going to have a squirtle for obvious reasons and I was going to pass on a charmander because, despite the typing, charizards looked too much like fucking Forgescale for my tastes.
Walking out past the other kids before the inevitable my pokemon is better than your pokemon fights started, I headed out to my training ground, which was really just a field behind my house that was in too awkward of a spot between houses for any one to care about or try and farm. The rocks scattered about it didn't hurt either. My work on it had offered a fair sized clear area for weights wepaon and cardio training.
This was much easier when I was a pony.
I sat down on a large chunk of wood that had a rope nailed into it for me to pull or try and push and finished reading the pokedex entry for the pokemon I had been given.
It was a three tier like the others given to first trainers but for a long time the first tier was never seen and people thought the second stage was the first form. A lot of people were still skeptical on it, but it was confirmed by Professor Oak in the Pallet town. Evidently one of his trainers went above and beyond in his research. Some trainer he had years ago come through had managed to complete the Kanto dex as it was known at the time finding 151 Pokemon in the region, though five of those pokemon were never revealed to the public for some reason. 144, 145, 146, 150, and 151 were often speculated and when asked why they were not included Professor Oak stated he was asked not to. The trainer who found them said nothing, like he was some sort of mute or something.
I was highly interested when I heard his name was Red, though nothing I could find about him made me think he was any sort of womanizer.
Back to my new companion I was wary of it simply due to the moves it knew being , Splash, Pound and copy cat. Not a bad move set, I could do without splash, but not everything was perfect.
My biggest worry was that I had a pokemon who didn't care about getting stronger, one that didn't care about training.
I had a goal I was going to try and find my friends, or failing that I was going to become the champion so that my name was spread far and wide and they could find me. Especially Luna.
So if this pokemon wasn't going to play ball I would need to use it until I caught something that would, then I could release it.
I pressed the button on the ball letting the pokemon free.
She stumbled a little her ears flicking as she looked around curiously before spinning to face me with a soft gasp.
“So here is the question for you? Do you want to get stronger? My goal is to find some people I'm missing, or to become champion so that everyone knows my name and they can find me. To do this we are going to train and we are going to fight so that we can crush any one that gets in our way. Are you willing to do that?”
I met the gaze of the pokemon as it stared at me, it was horribly cute and if she didn't want to I could send her back to my mother who would love her once I got something meaner.
The tiny pokemon considered then nodded at me meeting my gaze with a grin.
“Cleffa!” the star shaped pink thing cried out.
Rock Type
“Have you got a change of underwear?”
“ Several mom, you watched me pack my bag.” I offered, rather impressed at the poke gear design, the bag was way bigger on the inside and if not for the worry of it accidentally closing and trapping me inside I would have used the thing like a tent rather than have a real tent. You can take the practical out of the pony... no, you can take the pony out of practical, no...... you know what, that one got away from me.
“Do you have enough money?” My grandmother asked.
“Don't worry I'm sure I can beat up some other trainers for pocket change if need be, not to mention I know what berries to pick to sell for a good price.” I explained getting a small nod from my grandmother.
“Do not beat up random trainers for their pocket change.” My father added glaring at his mother who grinned back at him.
“If they challenge my grandson they better have the coin to back it up.” my grandmother chuckled.
Back home was.... interesting. My family treating me like a child about to be sent away , with hugs and check up and orders to call at every poke center.
I both hated it and loved it, never having had anything like this when I was a foal. My mother and grand mother died when I was too young to recall and my dad lost himself in his job leaving me to be raised by my grandfather alone, then my father was killed and my grandfather died.
Now. All four of them were here. Sure not as ponies, but...
I wondered how the other 10 year olds did this. I had centuries of camping out under the stars or in caves to fall back on. I could survive in nearly any environment no matter how harsh. I wouldn't want to be dumped into any of them unprepared though as I was no where near as hardy as a ten year old as I was a demi god unicorn, but I expected I had a better chance to survive than a normal kid.
My new cleffa was not getting off as easy in this departure either. My mothers vaporeon and espeon were both staring her down, as was my fathers emboar, and my grandmother's dragonite.
To Cleffa's credit she was staring right back at them her arms crossed in front of her as she did her best not to tremble before the mass of much more powerful Pokemon glaring at her. I had no idea what they were talking about over there with all the noises they were making but Cleffa was clearly having none of it.
I needed to find a name for her. Just calling her Cleffa would get odd.
“Alright that's enough mothering.” My grandfather snapped suddenly, breaking everyone's teasing, fountains of advice and general mothering. “Come on boy. I'll walk you to the river. I'm not about to offer any advice with this lot around asking if you packed enough socks or whatever.”
I smirked a little as my grandmother glowered at him, he was going to get it later for that. My father simply backed away He would argue with his father about somethings but since this was neither sports or politics he was silent. I returned Cleffa to her ball as my mother offered a last little pet to the fairy type. She thought Cleffa was adorable.
My grandmother looked worried about her though.
Gathering my bag I walked with my grandfather away from the house pausing to turn and offer a last wave. I was reluctant to leave. This was something that I unexpectedly didn't realize I lost in my time as a unicorn, though that was near constant war in truth.
We heading down the winding path from the house to the main road, my grandfather set a fair pace that I followed easily enough. He was silent for a time offering only a small wave of a nod to any we passed, though once we were past the edge of the town with the river in sight he spoke up.
“Don't let anyone know I told you boy. But your little cleffa worries your grandmother.”
“Why would a alternate starter worry grandma?”
“She's a dragon trainer.” my grandfather offered. “In Galor, Fairy types were a hard counter to dragons. There's not as many fairy pokemon here in Kanto. But if you train your partner like I know you will she's going to be a little monster. Just because they look cute doesn't mean they are not absolute beasts.”
“Of course. She was going to be that any way with my training.” I smirked as he chuckled.
“No doubt. I was a little worried you would get one of those useless electric rat things.”
“A pikachu?”
“Yep, good eating those however, and if you manage to put an arrow shaft though both of those cheek pouches of theirs, they self cook as their electricity goes off.”
“Seriously?”
“Maybe.”
I rolled my eyes at that as the pair of us stopped by the river at the edge of the bridge, the forest beyond. There were several paths I could take depending on how I wanted to take on the gyms.
The path over the river split in two and ran north and south.
To the south was Celadon City and the Gym that had the rainbow badge.
To the north the road joined up with route 3 and 4 at the foot of Mount Moon. I could take 4 to go after the water badge.
I was torn between getting the water out of the way, or avoiding it fully until the end.
“ I've got something for you. Your grandmother sent away for it a while ago, an old friend of hers in Galor owed her a favor. Do be careful with it I don't want to hear it from your mother.” My grand father offered reaching into his coat and pulling out something wrapped in blue cloth.
I took the bundle raising an eyebrow at the weight before I unwrapped it my eyes going wide.
It wasn't my grandmother's sword like I actually expected. Say what you will finding out that was a thing in my previous life was nuts.
What was in the bundle however wasn't a sword, it was a fair sized ax, it would be bigger than a hatchet to an adult but not quite a full ax. It reminded me of a fire ax actually with a spike on the back end of it. It would be quite useful for firewood in truth. I had a small knife already and planned to get a bigger one when I got some money of my own, but this was … interesting.
“ I know you were doing some sword training but no one does that here in Kanto, and if you were carrying around a blade people would treat you a little funny. An ax though has a lot of mundane uses and given you're gonna be on trails and in the woods no one will bat an eye. There's still bad people out there who might think twice if you had an ax and a pokemon, but don't go threatening any one with it. This is a training trip not a combat exercise.” My grandfather warned.” That said if it's you or them, make sure it's you.”
The weapon, because that is what it was, had a haft of a lovely dark shade that I couldn't identify, it was almost blue, the blade itself was hidden by a taros leather sheath and as I pulled that off to look at it my eyes widened.
The metal of the ax and spike was of a dark make, the material unmarked by any sort of decoration or even a makers mark. There was a faint blue aura around the blade as if it was reflecting a softer light than the sun.
The grip was a tight blue leather wrap.
The only marking was where the wood went up into the metal a single crescent moon.
“ It's made of good Galor steel, treat it right and you'll be passing that down to your grand kids. The wood is from a trevanent after the spirit has moved on, and the wrap is dragonair leather. Don't worry it's from a shedding, they act like snakes when they grow more than actual dragons.” My grandfather smirked showing his rather sharp teeth. He did have a tendency to talk down on other dragon types, but never the gibble line. As if he could be more obvious. I still wanted to know how he did it though. “The sheath is just tauros leather, I doubt that's good for the tauros but I've seen you put away tauros burgers like nothing so I doubt you care about that.”
I looked over the blade and the faint glow wondering how the hell something like this happened. Did the Waning Moon follow me? It was then I noticed there was work done on the leather sheath, including a name.
“ Dr. Choppy?”
“Your grandmother's friend is an odd one, claims he only makes 'smart' weapons and tools.” My grandfather sighed. “ You better get going, you should get some miles on you before the sun goes down, prolly have a few battles waiting for you too. I'd offer some platitude about you can always come home without finishing the badge challenge, but I doubt you'll do that. You're very much like your grandmother in that regard. Take care Jer'rahd, give'um hell.”
Author's Note
And now what i'm famous for... misleading and subverting expectations
Route 3 was boring.
Birds and rats everywhere, it was like Manehatten really. Occasionally there was a ekans, though I had a bit of an aversion to poison types as well.
Fucking bitch Scarlet...
That was a thought that worried me. If I was here would any of them be as well? I really didn't care if Silver Claw was here. His whole goal had been to try and save his father, and being dead and now in a different dimension that wasn't likely to be a thing.
Maybe he would just be a family man if his family was alive and well, though that made me wonder if the Charizards really were descended from Forgescale.
The others though. All of them were twisted and warped inside expect Nocturne, though she had become Dawn in reincarnation..... so that was kinda weird.
Blood Tail, Scarlet, Razor Wing, and Claymore on the other hand, if they were here as humans, I might be tempted to kill them. If I found any of them as Pokemon, I would catch them then drop the balls they were in into a building foundation some where.
That was neither here or there to be honest and my first day out had me learning how Cleffa worked.
She was an angry little thing, seemed my speech had worked with her and she would happily smash the shit out of anything that decided to come out of the tall grass.
The problem with that was she was getting hurt, a lot, and I had blown through most of my potions pretty early on caring for her.
She was a little tank, but she was not very fast and her attacks were weird.
Copy cat was kinda useless unless something attacked her with a special move, and most of the time whatever move that was the user was immune or barely hurt by, which made the move relatively useless. Though I could see a few uses for it that might surprise another trainer.
Pound was a good strong attack with no finesse though it didn't need it.
Splash was...... why did a cleffa even have that move?
I decided to camp for a few days in a designated spot for it and start on the sort of training I was used to. I had made basic Royal Guard into something that other units feared I could do the same with some pokemon.
Right?
Turned out it was not as simple as that. There were a lot of things I didn't consider.
For starters I was ten and a human. I also didn't have access to any sort of training ground, nor did I have easy access to a mess hall. I wasn't too worried about the last one as I did look up the best meals of pokechow for a cleffa and had supplies for that. Dealing with food was not something I was unfamiliar with in raising foals, but at the same time both Luna didn't really need to eat food at the end and I ate anything, so I was a few thousand years rusty on my cooking skills.
I knew there was basic pokechow, for those with pokemon as pets, but my mother and grandmother showed me how to prepare a proper meal catered to the pokemon I had, which required a lot of berry picking. Cleffa wasn't something either of them knew however so I had to do my own research to find a decent mix. Any other pokemon I picked up I would need to study as well.
Still after a few days both Cleffa and I were getting the hang of it. Running , push ups fire drills target training we were both building endurance and strength, things I was used to and that I used to use, but I needed to figure out a way to do speed training. For now though I was working Cleffa into a tank. She didn't have to be fast, she just had to survive what was hitting her and deal a blow that was twice as hard.
That was a combat style I knew well.
I had hoped to find a grass type or a manky along route 3 but I didn't so much as glimpse either, I guess the birds and the rats drove them off. I was tempted to grab a spearow for my team just for a bit of speed, but I decided against it. A spearow and later a fearow would be a bad match up again a rock gym. I considered trying my luck with just Cleffa , but after a few losses to random trainers along the route in battles where Cleffa got overwhelmed with numbers I decided I needed something else. Water types were out as were poison. I didn't want a jiggly puff and route 3 was full of them.
I considered bypassing the gym and heading to route 2 to see if I could find a bellsprout or a oddish, maybe even go for the ground badge first instead of the rock badge. I didn't want a poison type but I needed a grass type. Route 4 was right out simply due to the fact I wanted no water types.
This was one of the main reasons I wanted a bulbasaur to start all three of the closest gyms to my home town were weak to grass types, and bulbasaurs were beasts.
Still I didn't get a bulbasaur I got a cleffa, and I wasn't going to change my plans just because things got a little more difficult.
After about a week of camping I did a foraging session for various berries to sell and made my way into Pewter city. I got Cleffa healed up at the center, called home, took in the sights and then set out down route 2.
My plan was loosely head all the way down to Pallet Town training cleffa and seeing if anything caught my eye.
I could go with the standard mentality of catch anything that moved, but honestly caring for even six pokemon was a chore, I watched my mother and grandmother do it and it seemed excessive.
My grandmother only caught what she wanted and trained them for war. My mother caught everything, but released what she didn't want back into the wild, her training having made the pokemon stronger.
My mother's method seemed fairly common, though I had my hangups obviously it was something I wouldn't mind trying. But first I needed a grass type. If nothing else I was more used to training large groups than single individuals. Cleffa needed someone to spar with who could take it. Bell sprout were supposed to be quick, but I decided to go with what I knew and grab an oddish.
Brute force and survivability were my best skills. Why knock what worked?
Route 2 is just as boring as Route 3. Rats and birds.
I saw no signs of a oddish or a bellsprout. I'm in a damn forest and there's no plants..... fuck my life.
On the plus side Cleffa was turning into a hardy little beast. Her strength and toughness were building rapidly, her Pound attack, while just a wild haymaker punch was at the point where she would send most of the rats that came at us flying with only one punch. The training had paid off as well, in an odd way. Cleffa learned another move.
We were doing the basic striking exercises, this was usuallyaccompanied by a yell. I forgot what it was called but it was something i used as a training aid. For some reason screaming out as you struck added a bit of force and focus to a blow, and if you were angry enough, scared the shit out of any other enemies around the one you just pulped. Even a mote of fear or a heartbeats pause could be taken advantage of.
This is a fairly common tactic, not to be confused with shouting out your attack before you do it. I had taken advantage of that a few times in the past yelling one thing and doing something else entirely. It only works once or twice on the same opponent or group of them unless you are well known.
Imagine my surprise when a shout along with a hard punch into mitt i was having Cleffa hit, bowled me over to crash to the ground like I had gotten tackled.
After some chaos and a a bit of work calming Cleffa down i started experimenting to figure out what happened.
Seems she had learned something the pokedex called Disarming Voice
We practiced that until we were both a little hoarse.
Well I was a little horse before, but.... never mind, bad joke.
Still it was something else to add to our combat skills. It wasn't very strong, but if the target could hear her, or feel the vibrations....... actually I had no idea how this worked pokemon combat when it went beyond physical was weird to me.
I just accepted it.
I then started getting her to work the cry into her punches, so when she struck she yelled and blasted the enemy with two hits in one.
She couldn't pull it off at first though by the time we made it to Viridian City, she was managing it one time out of seven or eight.
I also gave her a name.
Rose.
Her full name was Sergeant Rose Petal, named after a mare under my command from the 42nd who died when we pushed back the dragon's forces into the Darklands. She was a rather mean cuss as well, tough and eager for a fight as any one else. She was lost in an attempt to secure a forward position across the draconic line. And her team did it too, held it long enough for the rest of us to get there and secure the rise. We used that high ground to great effect until Onyx Wing entered the field.
I closed my eyes a moment. So long ago and I still remember most of the names. How many of them were here on this world with me? How many did I meet again in Equestria in new lives? How many had moved on some where else, did any of them remember like i did? Or were they like my parents and grandparents, the same , yet without the memory of their past lives? Did everyone remember and just not talk about it? It was one of the questions i wondered and never had an answer for.
So i just had to live as i was and take each day as it came.
Rose huffed as my mind trailed, off drawing me back to our training. The little cleffa was thrilled with her name, and was still raring to go.
We stayed on route 2 for about a week before stopping in Viridian City. The gym was closed, according to the locals this was pretty much normal for this particular gym. I wondered how the place remained in operation. We stuck around for a few days battling a few trainers here and there, working on Rose's new ability. We did alright, though we lost more battles than we won, and made more than a few trips to the Pokemon Center.
Rose hated when she lost, but there were too many trainers in town that had poison types. Nidorans, ekans, oddishes, and bellsprouts were in high abundance here. While Rose did well, there were a few better trained ones where she couldn't over come the typing difference with brute force.
Her new ability however made dealing with the birds almost as easy as the rats.
After a few days sleeping under a real roof and having a real meal and a shower or course, I decided to head down towards Pallet Town after another call back home. I had been out here maybe two weeks already and I felt I hadn't done much. I hadn't even caught another pokemon yet.
The trip down route 1 was as much as I expected.
Dull.
I continued my strengthening drills and considered teaching Rose how to use a weapon. She got better quickly in combining the two attacks until she managed it at least one time out of three. Rose had the idea and refused to give up trying to master it. I figured i could call it Fairy Punch or something for when i needed to differentiate the moves, this punch had a range on it which made it sneaky, but it was only sneaky so long as it wasn't widely known.
I wished I had enough for a sword or at least a survival knife, but between the losses and travel expenses I had to make what funds I had last.
That was the main method of making money for new trainers after all. Betting on the fights.
It was something that bothered me at first. Reminded me of the few dog or cock fights Luna and I had come across in our travels. Here though, it was different, most pokemon seemed to want to fight. Some didn't of course, but it was less like a dog fight and more like boxers. If a pokemon didn't want to fight they didn't, a trainers will power could only force them so far. It was why a lot of new trainers never got more than a badge or two, they didn't have the drive for conflict, or their pokemon didn't. Some trainers swapped out their pokemon for ones that were willing to fight. Wild pokemon mostly, a number of the wild ones knew pairing with a human would allow them to become much stronger and thus likely dominate in their home territory when they came back.
I lucked out with Rose, despite being built like a ball of marshmallow fluff, she was very much a fighter.
We had entered Pallet Town and were following the trail that went along the outside of town that lead to one of the Trainer camping sites the Pokemon League had set up.
Pallet town had grown larger since Red left it, but the main draw was the large pokelab in town where a large number of revelations about the nature of pokemon as well as most of the updates to the pokedex came from. The building had started out of some one's garage like back n Ponytaville and expanded to a massive complex that was nearly the size of the town when it started. Of course the town grew as well to cater to the needs of the people who worked in the center. And so Pallet Town should have been renamed to Pallet City, but the locals didn't want to change it no matter how big the place got.
Rose and I were jogging, well I was jogging, rose was doing that weird ground covering skip her kind did though she had to adjust it to keep pace with me.
We had seen the massive wall that surrounded the Pokemon Lab compound. Much of the space it took up were custom biomes for the pokemon. The wall itself wasn't too special . just a sandstone wall with a tile decorated top, there was a bit of graffiti on the wall though.
Everything from the classic 'blank' was here, to the more complex designs of some one bordering on a true artist. I had to stop a moment to look over a well painted mural in spray paint of the epic battle between the Champion and Red. I had watched that on TV and it was still in constant reruns at times.
It was because of this pause that Rose and i missed being burred under a ton of rock as the outer wall exploded. Smoke billowed out of the hole, purple and stinging, looking up a Koffin floated over head spewing out the mist as it ducked into and around the smoke.
“Electrode return!” Shouted a voice from the smoke.” Move it maggots, that paralysis isn't going to last long.”
A figure emerged from the smoke right before us. A black mask covered the lower half of his face, he wore a black outfit and had a few pokeballs on his belt. He was carrying a large metal case with him as he emerged from the smoke. What drew my eyes was the bright red 'R' emblazoned on his chest.
"Team Rocket?" I blinked.
“Piss off kid!” The man growled and swung the case at me.
That was a mistake.
I might not be the big strong unicorn god of battle that I was before, but I had spent all ten years of my new life getting used to my body and training it.
I ducked under the case, the weight of it pulling him off balance before I slammed my fist into his midsection doubling him over, clearly he didn't expect a ten year old to have quite that much force in his hits as a disgusting sounding glurp came from his mouth as he tried to hold back from coughing up his lunch.
I pulled out the ax off my belt, bringing the handle of it down hard on the back of his head as he tried to recover, flattening the man to the ground.
Another rushed from the smoke cloud, she was dressed the same and also had a case, the koffin floated behind her.
“What the fuck.... GREG'S down!” she yelled back into the cloud.
“ROSE” I shouted pointing at the woman as I snatched the heavy case from the fallen man's grip, flinging it.
"CLEF~ FA!!'Rose took the hint and jumped up to slam her fist into the woman's jaw, sending her up off her feet and crashing back into the smoke.
The case hit the Koffin knocking it out of the air with the impact and breaking the case open. Dozen's of pokeballs spilled out of the opened case, all falling to clatter across the ground in the debris or landing with a thud on the grass.
My attention shifted from the loose pokeballs to the third figure stepping out of the smoke.
He was tall, probably about six foot, nearly all muscle, probably about 15 or 16. His skin was slightly yellowish brownish ,sandy color. He wasn't wearing a mask and had short cropped black hair and piercing blue eyes. He had on a brown undershirt with a black leather jacket with the stylized red R on the chest like a frat colt jacket, he was also carrying a case like the other two had been. What drew my attention however was the sword he had on his back. The massive thing was rough and pitted from use and nearly as tall as the man who wore it. A thick leather belt ran over his shoulder, likely to hold the sword and three pokeballs he had on the front.
“Stupid bitch, I knew I should have taken some one more skilled than your stupid ass.” The man snapped at the fallen woman before he looked up at me. The man's blue eyes widened at the sight of me and his face turned into a rictus snarl.
It took me one moment to recognize him, the voice however clenched it. Particularly since I was just thinking about these assholes.
I narrowed my eyes yanking the cover off the ax head as I snarled back at him, my fangs bared, the glowing red of my eye glinting off the head of my ax making the blade seem to glow red as well from the intensity.
“Kaisur.” the man spat my name.
“Claymore.” I literally spat after saying his.
“What the fuck are you doing here!?”
“Bout to make good on a promise I couldn't keep last time you little shit.” I snarled gripping my ax tighter.
“FIRE SPIN!” another voice screamed out causing the area behind Claymore to erupt in a inferno as the smoke exploded, the heat forcing Rose and myself back , though my eyes remained on Claymore.
Claymore cursed, glancing back at the hole in the wall and the pair of fallen Team Rocket members before he swore and glared at me before he pulled out a pokeball and released a rapidash.
My eyes widened at the sight of the equine.
It's horn was broken, and what looked like barbwire was pulled tight like a bridle on the horses face. It's ears were pierced with ragged bits of metal and still seemed to be bleeding. The wire was wrapped tight around it's legs digging into it's flesh and it's mane and tail were cut impossibly short somehow.
The thing that drew my attention though was the brand burned into it's flank, that looked like a mockery of Celestia's cutie mark.
I didn't even want to know what temperature a brand needed to be mark a fire type like that.
The white equine screamed out as it was summoned and the man mounted it, jabbing his heels into it;'s flanks and I could see that he wore spurs that drove into it's sides.
“This changes things. “Claymore growled.”Don't get comfortable Kaisur.”
“I'm gonna choke you to death with your own intestines.” I shouted back pushing forward only for Rose to move between me and Claymore pushing me back as the fire spin continued burning off the smoke the koffing had made.
Claymore took the pause to kick the rapidash in the sides again sending the creature galloping off at high speed crashing through the forest.
“I am going to kill that fucker so damn hard.”I snarled
“WATER CANNON!” the voice called again and a deluge of water poured over the flame filled air dampening it and eventually putting it out before a group of people rushed out of the hole in the wall, each of them with several pokemon surrounding them.
I glanced to where Claymore had vanished, before picking up the sheath for the ax head putting it back on as several of the larger pokemon turned their attention to me.
The fucker went that way.” I pointed into the forest gaining the attention of one of the people with the pokemon, the man dressed as a police officer nodded and gestured to an Arcanine that was with the group , mounting it and taking off after Claymore. A gesture from another sent a Fletchinder soaring off after him with a Fearow right behind it.
A Blastoise and a Magnaton stared me down as Rose turned and glared back at them as if daring the much larger pair to try something.
A older man in a lab coat walked up the rubble towards me, his hands touching the two large pokemon as he passed and the pair of them backed up a little. He paused to take note of the broken case and the scattered pokeballs with a sigh. A woman ran up behind him as he gestured to the balls and the other case which the woman rushed over to open and check.
“They're not here.” The woman cursed.
The man turned his attention back to me, brushing some soot off his lab coat. “And who might you be?”
I reached into my vest pocket pulling out my trainer ID before offering it to the man. “I'm Jer'rahd Kaisur from Ponytaville.”
He looked at the ID, then back to the two on the ground. He gestured to two of the guards who rushed over to secure them.
“Kaisur huh? I think I met your mother.. or maybe grandmother once before.” The man considered before handing back my ID. “ In either case it is nice to meet you despite the circumstances. My name is Professor Oak. ”
I took another sip of the coffee I was given only, picking a little at the burger and fries from the Lab's cafeteria.
As expected I had been questioned extensively about what happened. I was scolded a bit for taking on the rockets as I did by an Officer Jenny.
I say A Officer Jenny because there are lots of them. A full family of women who go into law enforcement. Much like the Nurse Joy family.
There were rumors that the girls were a type of Pokemon, but I didn't believe it. I had met Doughnut Joe in Canterlot, Manehatten, and Neighpon and several other places three hundred years after he died. It was weird, but not unheard of to have a family line like that. Twilight probably would have dropped into some sort of genetic anomaly rant. Spike had just accused him of being a pod pony.
In either event I gave a full description of Claymore to the ones asking the questions. Dark hair, sandy colored skin, blue eyes, and some sort of scarring on both his cheeks. The officers were far more upset with how I described the Rapidash he summoned. The pokemon had obviously been and was still being tortured. The two Rockets that were captured had pokemon that were fairly well cared for however, a koffin, a houndoon that hadn't been released, and the electrode that had self destructed.
The three cases that had been stolen, well one now, were all full of pokeballs. I wasn't sure on the why of it, but I doubted it was anything anyone wanted Claymore to have.
I dropped my hand down swatting Rose's hand away from my fries, she let out an annoyed huff having shoved her food into her mouth as fast as a Guard in training. It had taken me several lifetimes but I had finally dropped that habit myself.
Professor Oak himself had asked me to stick around for a bit. He wanted to talk to me but getting the lab back in order had taken precedent. He had listened in on all the talks and questions that were asked, but he had added nothing of his own aside from pointing out what needed to be done to fix the lab to his assistants.
It took a few hours, during which we were brought some food, but now the tall professor was approaching the little table in the main lobby they set me down in and offered a wave.
“Yes hello again Jer'rahd. I am sorry about the wait, if you are finished eating please would you mind coming with me?” Professor Oak asked.
I nodded pushing the half finished plate over to Rose , who promptly upended the whole thing into her mouth like a mini snorlax.
I rolled my eyes draining the coffee as I stood, glancing around for a place to put the dishes.
“Don't worry about it, just leave it here I'll have an assistant come and clean it up. If you like I can have one of the rooms used for trainers prepared for you for the night. It's not much, but it's a little better than the quarters provided at poke centers.
“That would be nice, thank you.”I offered following along with him, Rose bounding up after us with her floating skip walk.
“If no one has done it yet I would like to thank you for your actions today. The three cases that they were running off with contained pokemon from various areas that were sent to the lab for study. They contained Johto, Sinnoa, Alohan, and even Galor pokemon as well as a number of other areas including some private reserves, and 'lost' islands that are out there.”
I raised an eyebrow at that.
Oak glanced back and smirked. “I have sponsored a number of trainers and sent them out in the world to see what they can find. They often send back some of what they acquire releasing the pokemon to the lab. Those three cases were the latest shipment from Red, Blue, and Green. Yellow sends back notes but doesn't send in pokemon unless they are injured or a problem to the environment they were in.”
I nodded. I knew of Red and I had heard of Blue who was Red's rival, the other two I had no clue about though
He guided us down a hall to a door with a number code. He tapped what sounded like ten different numbers into the pad before opening the door.
“Have a seat.” he gestured to the room that looked to be half a massive lab, and half living area with only a small banister like thing between them.
I moved in with Rose before we both took a seat on a couch in the more friendly looking area. I had no idea what any of that equipment did, but it looked expensive and I didn't trust myself to be anywhere near it.
Professor Oak wandered over to the lab area digging around before he came back holding a tablet of some kind and a poke ball. He set them both down on the coffee table before me before he dropped back into a recliner on the other side with a low groan practically deflating.
“I'm getting too old for this sort of bullshit.” he sighed and I couldn't help smirk at the comment having said it a lot myself.
“So I would like to offer you a deal for you help today Jer'rahd.” Professor Oak stated his hand waving in the air but his head remained fallen back over the back of the recliner.
“I heard you talking with Officer Jenny about coming down to Pallet to try and find a grass type. In that ball is a grass starter we had extra from one of my associates in another region named Jacq. Honestly I'm not supposed to give that one out as it was supposed to be used for our research, but I was in the middle of scanning him in when the attack happened. I can easily register him with you and then simply claim he was part of the group that went missing. He's not registered to us yet so no one knows for sure anything but the count lost.” Professor Oak offered. “If nothing else consider him a reward for stopping a much worse situation.”
I looked at the ball rather surprised wondering if it was a bulbasaur like I had wanted. A glance to Rose saw her staring at the ball with a bit of worry. I reached out patting her on the head, I wasn't giving up my starter for another pokemon, I was just adding to the team.
She murred pressing her head up into my hand as I smirked.
“So what's the deal?” I asked.
“I would like you to become one of my sponsored trainers.” Oak offered.
My eyes widened. A sponsorship from Professor was a big deal. Usually one could get a sponsorship from a gym if you were skilled enough or knew some one. For a gym this sort of thing would get you a stipend to use on your travels as well as a place to store any pokemon you caught that you didn't want on your team. The size of the stable varied on the sponsor. I think Pewter Gym had a average of 10 in their stable. I had no idea what the pay and storage space would have in a lab like this. Not to mention with how well known Professor Oak was the prestige was going to draw attention, and since that was my goal to have my name thrown out this was perfect for my goals.
“I certainly didn't expect that.”
“No one expects the Samuel invitation. Our chief weapon is surprise.” Professor Oak announced to the air still waving an arm though his head hadn't moved from staring at the ceiling.
“Ummm.”
“Right ten, forget about it. No one learns any good pop culture any more.” Professor Oak grumbled.” Any way I take you are interested. There's some paper work to fill out, but the bulk of that will be sent to your parents to fill out due to your age. Any thing you sign is just agreeing that you want to do this but isn't valid until a parent of Guardian also sign. That avoids some issues we've had in the past.”
I didn't want to ask about the issues but I knew one of them because mom had harped about it, some kid signing away all his pokemon to a gym leader in a sponsorship and being left with nothing at the end of his journey. The kid had enough intelligence by that point to bring it to the League and the Police and they came down on the trainer like a ton of bricks. They also found a number of other gyms doing something similar and shut them down. It was one of the reasons why there was no Steel, Bug, Dark, or a few other type Gyms in Kanto at the moment. Luckily the major Gyms played it legit and were still intact so the league didn't need to adjust their eight badge path any, the lesser gyms were still there, but their badges didn't mean anything at the moment other than bragging rights, and only the most dedicated trainers went after them.
“Well I accept that. I could certainly use it. I've been selling berries to afford the basics and I've been avoiding capturing everything like most new trainers as I wouldn't have been able to afford to care for them long.” I offered.
“Well don't worry about the last bit if you want to catch something but don't want to keep it you can send it to the lab. We trade a lot of our local common pokemon to other regions for their local common pokemon for study. “
“Alright sounds good.” I nodded looking down at the ball and pokedex on the table.
“ I do have one other question for you though.”
“What's that?” I asked.
Professor Oak lifted his head and looked at me again, this time with an intensity I hadn't expected. The goofy looking smile he had had all day was gone as well.
“So. Which world are you from then?” Professor Oak asked flatly.
“What?” I asked with a stammer.
“Hmm, are you not from a different universe? I thought I had gotten rather good at telling that. Maybe you are from just further along the timeline one way or another. I was never good at the temporal side of things.” He glanced back to me as I stared. “Don't worry you are hardly the only one I've encountered... well I take that back, you are the first in this place...”
“I was born in Ponytaville.” I stated glancing to Rose before pulling her back into her ball as she looked at us confused.
“Yes. But this wasn't the first time you were born was it?” Oak offered narrowing his eyes a bit as I called my pokemon back into the ball.
I stared a moment at him before frowning. ”What are you even talking about?”
Oak sighed sitting back in his chair staring into the air.” A long time ago I was on my first training trip. I encountered a Jirachi and I made a wish that I wanted to know everything about all the pokemon there were.”
He ran a hand through his gray hair.
“Well it seems the wish was granted. Only I have to learn everything myself and I only have the one lifetime to to do it in. Ninety six years each time barring accidents. And when that ends, I pop up as another Oak the next dimension over which sometimes has a completely different run of Pokemon or changes their abilities. Hell for a lot of them most people didn't know how to evolve certain pokemon and families that did know kept the secret tight in their family lines. Some of them had different results to the wars or divergent histories. But there was always things to learn about Pokemon. After a time I became aware that there were others sort of like me. People reborn in the pokemon world or yanked here for some reason or another. Sometimes they were people like you or I, sometimes they were pokemon themselves. Perhaps there are always people like that whom I just never met. But there are always two things that are always the same in places I've been. There are always pokemon, and there's always some one on their first Journey who catches my attention. Usually it's some kid named Ash Ketchum, but there's no one I've seen with that name not even the last name Ketchum.
He trailed off a moment as I continued to stare.
“Why do you even think I'm one of these whatever, reborn people or not?” I questioned.
“Your Aura is wrong in a specific way. Nothing harmful, I've just been doing this long enough that I can sense the variation.”
“So how long has that taken?”
Oak pondered.” I dunno, a few hundred years or so, I lost count but I expect I might be nearing two maybe three thousand years of doing these sort of loops. Every time I think I am getting closer to discovering all there is to know some one finds a new region. Seriously how big is this damn world? Does Arucus keep expanding it or something?”
“Ah. A young immortal.” I smirked.
He looked at me with an eyebrow raised as I grinned.” There is a story there that I would love to hear one day. So....”
“Equestria.” I offered simply.
He mulled that over for a moment before nodding.” I've met a few of those, most of the time I just let it go and watch them , though with your interaction with this Claymore fellow I felt I should get a little more involved, particularly with how you say that Rapidash looked. I don't like making myself known, I did that a few times in the past and those wound up being short lives.”
“So what does this mean then, now that you know this?” I questioned.
“For you? Pretty much nothing. I doubt you'll say anything about me and if you do I'll just laugh it off as some silly belief of a ten year old. I've been mentioned in stranger conspiracy theories after all. But you don't seem the sort to do that. “Professor Oak hummed. ”What I want to know however is what your connection is with that Claymore fellow?”
“He's someone I need to kill.” I growled.
“Ahh one of those. While I would prefer you not kill anyone, if he's willing to treat pokemon like that I'm not going to lose any sleep if he is made to be no longer among the living, so long as he doesn't become a ghost type, I can see that being a pain.” Professor Oak sighed and gestured to the pokedex on the table.
“This is the current Gen of the Pokedex, it's been updated to something I call the National Dex. It will auto update every time you come into a open network like at a poke center. Any new discoveries that have been found will be loaded, and anything you find will be uploaded. Most of them will be minor from other owners of this sort of pokedex. Maybe a feather color variation on a pidgy or some one found a Manky with a 'passive' temperament. But occasionally new discoveries will be found, and it also acts as a video cell phone.” Professor Oak explained. “I want you to take this and keep me updated on what you are doing. I'm not sure how you are going to handle things being from another world, but that is something I want to study as well. Even if you are no different than any other Kanto 10 year old now.”
This whole thing was weird, but I had long ago learned to simply roll with weird. I had no idea if I would go any where beyond Kanto, but given my goal this was perfect.
“I have a request. On top of this.” I stated. Better to hedge my bets.
“Oh?”
“There may be others like me if Claymore is here. I want you to keep an eye out for them? Their names are Luna, Velkorn, Rhede, Bleu, and Starfall, there may be others but those in particular. If you meet any of them make sure they have a way to contact me.”
“Lost friends.... I can respect that sort of search. I suppose you are looking to be the champion so your name is heard by everyone too?”
“Of course.”
Oak smiled.” On that I wish you luck. Famous as I am there is only so much I can do with the league.”
He gestured to the ball I had picked. “Well now this is all settled and you've made your choice, how about to introduce yourself to your new turtwig?”
"You're being sponsored? By who?" Mom questioned with dad and grandma leaning over her shoulder behind her. Grandpa was behind them somewhere though, I couldn't tell where as mom's vaporeon and espeon were taking up what little space was left on the screen.
It was moments like this that I was made more aware of how different everyone looked. My grandmothers hair was gray and white, though it had been vibrant red when she was younger, but she had gone gray in her thirties and blamed my grandfather for it.
Though I couldn't see him my grandfather was a hulking brute of a man with purple hair that bordered on navy blue. Unlike my grandmother he didn't have any gray hair and barely any wrinkles, neither of them looked as old as they were but fifties were not that old by comparison, though my views on age might be off a bit.
My father however looked nothing like his mother or father. He was some what short with bright blue hair , though he had a swimmers build from his time in the Guard.. Army and now the police.
Mom had pink hair and was a frail beauty from being sick so much when she was younger, but she looked out of place with the rest of my family who all looked like they benched wailords in their spare time compared to her.
Then there was me, a tall lankly ten year old with more muscle than any one expected I could put on and a mat of amber colored hair that didn't match anyone else in my family, not even on moms side that she know of.
"Professor Oak of Pallet town." I offered leaning back in the chair a little Rose was sitting in my lap as i petted her between the ears. She was rather mad that i pulled her back into the ball when i did , but she accepted at least that what was talked about wasn't that important and was just legal nonsense.
"You were sponsored by THE Professor Oak?" my dad questioned
"Well that's what he said to call him and it's what everyone here calls him." I couldn't help but snark.
"Jer'rahd what did you do to get a sponsorship?" Mom asked again, her vaporeon trilling behind her.
"Rose and I beat the fool out of a couple of Rockets trying to steal from the lab." I offered with a nonchalant shrug. Rose rolled her eyes at the tone.
On the other end of the video call my grandmother started cackling at that and i could hear my grandfather call out his approval. Dad simply smirked and shook his head though mom looked mortified.
"Are you serious!?" mom demanded.
"Yup. He said all the paperwork will show up at the house in the next day or two. I can only sign the very basic consent forms at my age and that was mostly to show i agreed to everyone involved, but nothing i sign is considered legal without a parental signature. That's why the bulk of the information will be sent to you." I explained.
"The Gary act." Dad nodded. " Do you know how much the stipend is?"
"Only about 500 a week. That's the basic intern payout. I need to actually raise my reputation on the gym circuit or discovering things in order to raise it. Though I'm already set to do so given I'm going to be raising and training a pokemon they gave me from Sinnoh. What ever I document with Turtwig will likely go into the pokedex as I'm raising him up from just old enough to leave his mother."
"You have a Turtwig?" My grandmother considered. " A grass and a Fairy type, have you caught anything else?"
"Not yet I came down this way towards Pallet because I wanted to catch a grass type before I went after the rock badge. Instead I caught some Rockets." I offered with a smirk smiling as my grandfather continued to cackle in the background.
"So what do you plan to do now?" Dad asked.
"Same I was going to do. Train up turtwig and Rose and get ready for a battle with Brock. I figure a couple of weeks wandering around the forest, maybe swing by the entrance of victory road and see if anything got out side the reserve that might be interesting. Routes 1 through 3 are all pokemon I have no interest in, well maybe a nidoran, but I'm not a fan of poison types, so likely not."
"Let us know if you need anything Jer'rahd." Grandma offered. " I know you've been saving your allowance for a few years for this journey, but you've already made a name for yourself after only a few weeks."
She gave a grin that was almost feral that had my father rolling his eyes.
"If you managed this in a few weeks I can't wait to see what you do in a month or two." Grandmas offered, my grandfather still laughing in the back ground.
I spent three days at the lab, the first was my getting there, the second was more questions and paperwork, and the third was me taking a day to relax and study before getting back on the road. Aside from that first day Professor Oak never brought up the dimensional fuckery.
A lot of that third day was spent on a computer or with my nose in a book. I had to readjust what food I needed for the turtwig in addition to what Rose needed.
I wasn't unfamiliar with meal prep as when Luna and I had kids I did most of the cooking and keeping it something healthy that they liked was tricky. Pip never complained about anything, Paintbrush had certain food he would eat all the time with no variation, Dawn would eat literally anything you put before her including the dinner ware, and Berry was insanely picky. By the time we took in Sunset she was old enough to make food and feed herself, so she hardly counted.
Luna and i adopted a few other kids from bad situations over the course of our lives, sometimes not even pony foals, but we never really settled down again for more than ten or twenty years and there were never any deep connections like there were to our first.
Luna still could barely boil water by the time we left that world. If she was here I hoped she improved. I don't think my stomach is quite as tough as a human as it was when I was a pony.
Still my looking over what was known about turtwig's and their evolutions gave me the perfect name for him.
Tank.
Tanks were a known thing even back in Equestria. They were a minor gremlin creation there, though some races adopted them, they were little protection against magic. Discord's giant turtle monsters however were named before the first mechanical tanks were created. But he was a weird one any way.
Here there were tanks as well, but it was much easier to use pokemon, and tanks were more a support role when there was conflict. Mostly there were just APCs with some guns that they called tanks.
In either case the little guy was rather interesting. He was quicker than he looked, which wasn't saying much, but he had power to spare, small as he was both Rose and I could sit on his shell and he'd carry us around with no trouble. He was already a brute and between him and Rose we would roll over anything that tried to take us head on.
Well once training was done however.
But despite what many in my past thought, I was far from a one trick pony, and building up nothing but direct damage was only going to get me so far. Both of my pokemon were too young to really get into skill over force just yet, though Rose's 'Fairy Punch' was a good start, though the only thing Tank knew how to do was tackle someone, so he needed a good bit more training before he would even learn a grass move.
Still I figured I needed to get back to training and I set out with a few last words with Professor Oak. I promised to keep in touch and he promised to keep an eye out for any of my 'Friends'.
Before I started on the Route again I stopped into the Pallet Town Shop to pick up a few supplies and one item that I wasn't sure they had. I was prepared to make my own as I had done before, but on finding one I bought it immediately even though I spent more than I liked on something that was mostly cheap 'Travel sized' junk.
Once I had walked far enough up route 1 I turned and headed deeper into the woods brushing up against the cliff that protected Victory Road from the rest of the world, and made camp there to start training again. Having two pokemon felt easier for me and I figured by the time I got six I would be back to my old drill sergeant ways, though I vowed to myself not to be as mean as these pokemon were going to be my partners not sent off to be under some one elses command.
Honestly that thought led me down a rabbit hole of possible future employment in training pokemon. Hell if I managed to make it to the elite four with my team I could probably charge anything I wanted and people would still pay it.
I started with the basic training that Rose and I were used to, easing Tank into it, though he didn't seem to have any trouble with anything save the speed and reflex training. He was a tough little thing and he picked up on some of the training quicker than Rose did.
After a time I brought both of them back to the camp and had Tank drag the rock he had been tied to into the middle of camp. Untying him I laid out the flat board on the rock and gestured them both over.
"Alright here's how the training is going to go we're going to do physical then switch to mental to get a bit of rest. Doing one thing all the time will make you very good at that one thing, but I subscribe tot he JOAT school of learning. Jack/Jill of all Trades, I figure you guys didn't know what a JOAT was, anyway.” I pointed out. ”I'm going to be teaching you a game, then once you know how to play that game I'm going to start in on the strategy.”
The pair of them looked at each other then back to me as I held up a bit of plastic carved into a vaguely equine shape tat might have been a ponyta.
“This is a knight it can only move in an L shape.” I set the piece on the board holding up another much taller piece that looked to be modeled after a slowking. “This is a Prince... I mean king... nah lets muddle it. This is a Prince....”
An ax is not a sword.
The literialists will see this as an obvious fact.
The philosophers would ponder this statement as if it was a profound truth.
The anti-violence people would disagree.
The metallurgists would compare notes.
Only those who have used both weapons would understand.
I spent a chunk of my former life between when my grandfathers sword broke and before I got the Waning Moon using an ax. I also spent a great deal of time when traveling with Luna using as many new weapons as I could, just for entertainment sake.
Spears, daggers, swords of various types polearms axes, I even learned how to use a meteor hammer, not well, but I kept at it because any time I got tangled up in the wire or smacked myself on the rump with it Luna smiled or laughed. That never happened often enough for my taste.
At any rate an ax is primarily a chopping weapon, it uses the weight of the head to add extra power to the swing. It started as a tool for wood gathering before it was adjusted into other more violent roles.
A sword began as a knife, a tool for eating or wood work, and it evolved to a tool for clearing brush to a weapon. A crossbow, bow, and now here a gun only had one purpose, to kill, useful, but they were never tools.
A sword in combat can be anything, chopping weapon, stabbing weapon, slashing or guarding, it's how they were designed, some can be thrown, some were designed to break other swords, or shoot out beams of every if the wielders life force was high enough. There is a finesse with a sword that one does not see with an ax.
I was by no means a master of the sword, Starfall regularly beat me in our spars, as did Luna, but by the end of my previous life I was more skilled with the sword than any other weapon. Since my rebirth I struggled to train myself back to that level and with my new body and how the weapon is handled I am no where near a master, or even what some would consider a journeyman.
This has more to do with the body I have than anything else. Despite my mind coming tot his form, muscle memory did not.
Learning to walk again was highly embarrassing.
I knew the drills, strikes, and shifts of a sword like the back of my hoof.
Which was a problem as I had hands now.
Nearly everything I knew about wielding a sword had to be thrown out and relearned.
Much of what I knew about axes however was still viable.
The reason for this is that axes were very much a Minotaur weapon, they more than any other race preferred the heavy weapon. And they had hands.
I needed to learn how a Minotaur used an ax before I could use one as a pony, and much of that training worked as well in this body.
As such between training my pokemon I reworked all the skills and training I could recall for using an ax.
Claymore was out there, and judging by the sword he had, he had tried to relearn his skill as well. He had several years on me here and was likely more skilled, if he had drawn his blade and we had fought, I was certain I would have lost. And that was before considering what pokemon he had, Rose was young and just starting to learn. Claymore had likely had better trained pokemon and it was only the approach of the guards that caused him to run.
I had gotten lucky, and I hated relying on luck.
We only spent two weeks out in the forest, I never encountered anything escaping from Victory road, though I met a few Rangers who patrolled the area pausing to check up on me. They thought my idea to catch something that escaped was a interesting one, though they pointed out part of their job was to make sure that didn't happen.
I had expected as much, but confirmation was annoying. Still Tank's training was going well, he still didn't have a grass type move yet but the three of us were at a point that nothing we encountered here was much of a challenge anymore. I wasn't confident that we could take the Pewter City gym, but Rose and Tank were willing to give it a shot. I wanted to deal with Gym Trainer Giovanni first since we were in the area, but no one had seen him in some time. According to Professor Oak the man was on the verge of being declared missing, and one of the smaller gyms would be raised up to Badge route status if he didn't return in the next few weeks. Oak left a few things unsaid about the man, but he warned me to be careful unless what he learned in the past held true here.
The change in Gyms was rather the same thing I had been hoping for when the previous water gym trainer was killed. Selfish, I know, but I was a little beyond worrying about that. Besides karma smacked me right back and one of his daughters took over near instantly and wound up being far more vicious and skilled than her father had ever been.
I did not look forward to facing Misty.
One day I would need to take on that gym, but it was not today, tomorrow wasn't looking to good either.
We broke camp and wandered back up the routes, taking it slow to try and get in more training. I was trying to get in as much training as I could simply for the fact our first attempt at a badge would be coming when we made it to Pewter.
The rock based gym was a first stop for quite a few aspiring trainers. After all it was rather easy to get a grass or water type to go after the place. That was why I headed to Pallet after all.
But from what Dad had told me, the current gym leader was a man named Brock who had inherited the gym from his father after some debacle with his mother. It was one of those open secrets it seemed.
Brock had taken the gym from some hole in the wall style gym and brought it back up to snuff fully, turning what was a borderline second tier gym into one of the required badges of the circuit. While known to use some kid gloves for those just coming in for their first badge, Brock was also known to have a team that could have put him in the Elite Four if he wanted. There were also rumors that he beat the current champion, Lance, in a private match, though no one had any real proof of that, fewer still believed that the Gym Leader could have anywhere near the power to be in the elite four.
Dad however had pointed out that Brock worked with the local Rangers and was often called upon by them when they had something they couldn't deal with themselves.
Forewarned I had no intention of underestimating him.
Particularly with the rumor that his father was found outside the city limits years ago, killed by a rock type pokemon. Brock was proven innocent, but rumors hardly cared.
Pewter City was a fair sized place. A little bigger than Ponytaville, but smaller than Pallet Town had become with the addition of the lab. The gym itself sat to the side of it pressed up against the foot of Mt. Moon, the front of it was a massive boulder that had been carved out in to the front lobby and facing of the gym, but the real structure was built behind that towering over the top of the front boulder and pushing back further on top of and into the foot of Mt. Moon.
The interior of the building was an odd design, there was a front desk and behind that was an arena.
After signing in to challenge the gym I was given a Gym Challenger Pamphlet that explained the gym so I could look around while I waited. There were a number of other trainers who were called up one at a time and taken into the back where the other fields were.
The battle arena behind the front desk was the old field for the Gym having been around for at least six generations before this one making it one of the oldest fields still in use in the League, at least until it was semi retired a few years ago after the arena was flooded when the old fire system was damaged during a pokemon battle by an electric type.
While the field was restored it was mostly kept around for the tourists, though there was something else here as well which drew my eye.
The field itself was smooth well maintained dirt with arena lines drawn out in white chalk lines. Various boulders dotted the field as scatter terrain and the place was just smaller than a current regulation fields for battles.
The layout and the design was a near work of art looking more like a zen garden with how the dirt was raked out than anything else. The scattered boulders seemed to have various ores and quartz veins that made them glitter as they caught the light.
The Gym Leader’s pitch was a six by six monolith of stone carved with various pokemon, all rock types of some sort of another and one human face. A memorial of those fallen under the Gym Leaders care either in battles gone wrong or old age. I was unsure of the human carved in it, but I suspected it might have been Brock’s father.
The challenger’s pitch was just as wide but it was a foot or so taller and twice as long away from the field. This pillar was carved with a number of pokemon as well, mostly water and grass types with some rock and ground, a scattering of fire types, one carving of a very smug looking pikachu and a few other scattered types.
The pamphlet stated this was a pillar of all those who had challenged the rock gym as their first badge and then made it the full distance in the circuit.
Any trainer who made it far enough to challenge and beat even one of the elite four had their starter carved here.
I didn't see any Bug or Fairy types.
Resting my hand on Rose's ball I smirked. That was going to change soon enough. I had no plans to stop until the world knew my name, and that would draw in my friends if they existed to meet back with me, and would either cause my enemies to run off and hide, or come to me so I could end them. I knew Claymore was here, how many others would be around? I doubted Scarlet, Avianna or any of the books would be here, that lot forfeited their souls when they became books, there would be nothing left to come to another life. At least if Grace had been correct.
“Jer'rahd Kaisur! Trainer Jer'rahd Kaisur.” a voice called and my attention shifted to the speaker. It was a young woman perhaps in her late teens with spiky brown hair and closed eyes. She was dressed in a uniform like some of the others he had seen running around and had a name tag that read 'Yolanda'.
“I'm here.” I called and climbed back out of the old field walking towards her. She nodded and waved a clipboard. Four other trainers stood around her. One I recognized form Ponytaville, the other three I had no idea who they were.
”Alright, you're the third match from this group of five, lot of new trainers this year Don’t get up set the order was randomly generated.” Yolanda offered.” Okay listen up. We're putting you all through the standard gauntlet of three trainers before you face Gym Leader Brock. Standard League rules, first trainer has one, second two, third has three, and Gym leader Brock will field three. You can use any items you have but you cannot leave the gauntlet to run to a pokemon center without forfeiting your challenge. You can swap Pokemon as need be , but trainers and Gym leaders are not allowed to swap without pulling their pokemon from the rest of battle. Due to how things are going Garrit you head in first. Just head through these doors behind me and face the first trainer.”
The boy nodded and swallowed hard striding forward and going through the doors.
“Alright Emily, once I get word we’ll be sending you in right after him then Jer’rahd , then Greg, and finally Alice.” she looked over the clipboard and frowned. “Jer’rahd, you didn’t check the difficulty you wanted. I expect as a first time challenger you want the basic difficulty or would you like one of the higher rankings?”
“I have no assumptions about my skill, so I will not be challenging at League or Elite level this time. But I want to be sure that no one will hold back in the basic challenge. I cannot get better as a trainer if I’m being handed the badge.” Jer'rahd offered.
“Noted, but you don't have to worry about that. Salvadore might be a bit soft touch at times, but Forest and Cindy will eat you alive if you let them. And if you get to Brock, well. He will make you earn your badge.” Yolonda smirked and gestured to a large monitor on the far wall. “Now then, who wants to watch Garrit’s run?”
The five of us remaining watched the screen as the first challenger of our group headed into the arena. The pair on the screen were still, likely as they were being announced. There didn't seem to be any sound, but that might be expected if they wanted to hide move types and such, or it just might be that battles could be loud and the receptionist didn't want to hear them.
“That trainer is my brother, Salvador, he’s the first one you will face today.” Yolanda offered.
Garrit tossed out his first pokeball. A Polywag.
I suppressed a shudder at the thought of it. I don’t know why, but water type pokemon unnerved me, not as much as the sight of deep water did, but something about them bothered me. Still it was something I have been able to adjust to as I rather liked mom’s vaporeon, though she freaked me out when I was younger. Perhaps it was a mental strain from the sea ponies. I never really saw any of the deep ones after the events where I helped Nightmare moon kill Aqua, just a few river ponies here and there on our travels, so it might have been something else put into me by that damn fish when she tried to break me.
Salvadore tossed out a geodude.
To be honest I expected this to be an easy win for the polywag.
It wasn’t, well sort of.
The geodude was tanking hits from the polywag using water gun and barely seemed to notice. The geodude however was trying to force the trainer to do more than than just water gun. The geodude was only doing rock throw as a move however, but it dodged, sped itself up or moved around in a pattern as if trying to see what the trainer could do, and it seemed disappointed at the constant attacks with water.
Salvadore said something and made a gesture, though we couldn't hear what on the muted screen.
The geodude rolled it’s eyes clutched it’s chest like it had been shot and rolled over on it’s back as another water gun hit it.
I frowned, the screen remaining on and showing the arena even as Garrit was waved through. The geodude got back up as soon as he was gone dusted itself off and looked in annoyance at Salvadore who said something to it.
I glanced to the others who were with me, their attention was drawn to Yolanda calling Emily to head in. they might have missed that.
I looked back at the screen noting that it didn’t move to follow Garrit but stayed on Salvadore who was standing there staring at the girl who came in.
She called out a oddish.
I watched this fight, piecing together what was going on. I walked over to Yolanda and gestured to the screen .
“Exactly how powerful is that geodude.” I questioned.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the skill levels of any pokemon you are to face.” Yolanda smirked slightly.
“That’s ridiculous. This isn’t a first match up it’s a gear check, has any one even hurt that geodude at all yet?” I questioned.
Yolanda’s smile widened, with her eyes closed like they were she looked rather sinister.” Well, well. It has been a while since anyone’s caught onto that. Good eye on you. Are you sure you don’t want me to bump you up to league?”
“I stand by my earlier assessment. Maybe if I come back through to make sure you carved Rose’ likeness on your pitch over there, but not now.”
“Oh you are going to be a fun one.” Yolanda considered. “To answer your question… partially, Emerald there should have been a Golem by now, but her former trainer found her in an area with a large amount of ever stone and many rock types take on the properties of the minerals around them due to their diet of said minerals. Emerald is never going to evolve, but she is quite useful as a test for new trainers. If you are not able to show enough skill, base power or resistance, Salvadore will have her take you down. No sense in a weak pokemon or trainer getting to face Forest and getting badly hurt if they cannot handle it, let alone Brock.”
I nodded at that glancing back to the screen as the geodude threw her hands in the air at the constant poison attacks being thrown her way, the goop not even sticking to the rock type. The match continued a bit longer with the same attempts to poison the rock before Salvador puckered his lips like he was whistling and the geodude's grin turned dark. Emerald reared back her arm and surged forward smashing the oddish in the face with a mega punch and sending it bouncing across the field to hit the restraining wall. The girl cried out at the attack and quickly returned her oddish. Her next pokemon was a rattata, this one barely listened to her and Emerald knocked the rat out the same way after a few random attacks. The girl recalled it and the match was over.
"Jer'rahd Kaisur. You're up. " Yolanda called gesturing to the doors, she spoke in a lower voice as he passed. “ Don't disappoint me after all that logic of yours.”
I nodded and pushed open the doors, a plan forming in my head. Tank didn't have many moves, but he was on the verge of learning a grass move. I wanted him to understand that by the time we got to Brock, but i didn't want to tip my hand or reveal all that Rose knew just yet. Tank would need to get me through two trainers before I let Rose out to blindside Brock. No one else seemed to have a fairy in the group I had been part of.
“Challenger Kaisur, step forward onto the pitch.” A mechanical sounding voice called.
I stepped forward my hand going to Tank’s pokeball as I looked across the field to the boy before me. He was a teen, maybe sixteen or seventeen, younger than his sister outside, though the resemblance was clear, same spikey hair and weird squinting eyes that didn’t even look like they were open.
I knew a pony with eyes like that , colt had the best vision in the Guard at the time and was a spotter for artillery despite being an Earth pony rather than a Pegasus.
Completely deaf from being too close to the mage shells going off though.
“Challenger Kaisur are you ready?”
I nodded staring across the field at Salvadore.
“Gym Trainer Salvadore are you ready?” the speaker asked.
“Yup.” He stated popping the P.
“Begin.”
“Tank go!” I shouted tossing out the pokeball.
“Emerald you’re up.” Salvadore called.
I could do this easy, I could show off the moves and save my skills for the next fight with the unknown Forest. But being sneaky was Rhede’s thing. Sure I could do it, but I needed Tank to survive though two trainers and he only had a limited move set to be fair. He was on the cusp of a third move, and maybe he’d have a break through to get whatever grass move he was working on, but for now he had two moves , a defend and an attack. And honestly a lot of what I planned here depending on Emerald holding herself back from just smashing Tank and following the pattern I though I saw in two matches.
“Tank withdraw.”
Tank quickly pulled into his shell, the effect hiding all of him from view save the plant on top of his head the leaves of it quivering in front of his shell.
Emerald frowned at that before doing her usual rock throw. The rocks plinked off Tanks shell not doing anything noticeable.
“Keep at it.” I ordered noticing Salvadore frown a bit.
More rocks plinked off Tank and Emerald growled.
This continued for a few moments and I expected that the geodude was ready to do something more. This was also likely the most boring match any one had seen yet on the screen. Tanks defense was high enough that a simple rock throw wouldn’t hurt him, I only hoped Salvadore was going to follow the same pattern as he did with the girl before me.
“Emerald. Do it.” Salvadore sighed with a whistle as he looked at me. “You need more training.”
I smiled, and Salvadore twitched as he saw my fangs.
Emerald missed the exchanged and like she had done with the Rattata and oddish floated right up and punched Tank.
Just like the oddish the impact sent him flying , but unlike the oddish Tank had a lot of weight to him so instead of flying he skidded across the gravel of the field straight at the wall.
This was a trick I had found out while watching Rose and Tank spar, Tanks withdraw, while not a perfect defense hardened his shell from any physical impact. Rose had gotten frustrated that she couldn't do anything to him and had hit him as hard as she could. Tank had gone flying just like he was now, withdrawn into his shell and skidding across the forest floor, he then hit a tree trunk and bounced back plowing into Rose with three fourths the force of her own punch. The impact had knocked Rose on her butt and Tank hadn't seen any worse for wear.
It was funny at the time , but I realized I could use it, so I built a combo off it. It was only usable in certain situations when you knew the enemy was going to do something.
Like Emerald's mega punch.
As expected Tank hit the wall and bounced off sliding back at the floating rock with a good bit of speed despite the impact taking some of the power out of it. Emerald watched in confusion and annoyance as Tank slid back at her, though given she was floating above the ground in that weird geodude way, she likely expected Tank would slide right under her.
“Tank Tackle, NOW!” I shouted out and Tank popped his legs out suddenly and lunged.
The now flying turtle was sped up even more by the tackle plus the impact of the mega punch that hadn't bled off. That boosted tackle slammed into the geodude who was actually rocked back from the hit and sent staggering, a chip of rock falling from her cheek.
The geodude glared touching her cheek and nearly snarling at Tank who popped fully out of his shell with a huff, dirty but mostly undamaged.
Emerald moved forward as if ready to continue on the attack when a call from Salvadore stopped her. The geodude whirled and looked up at him gesturing wildly with her hands in a obvious ‘Oh Come ON!? expression.
Salvadore shook his head and Emerald huffed and fell back like she had been murdered, going full ham and showing to any one watching that this win was completely fake. That annoyed me, but I would take it.
“Well. Seems there is something to you.” Salvadore smirked. “I hope that wasn't luck and that being a clever kid is enough for you to get past Forest.”
Oh stars why did he say it like that!?!?
I HATE being called clever. It never ends well for me even if I plan for the chaos.
As such, Salvadore almost destroyed me, I had to pull Tank out and put Rose in just to keep Tank from getting knocked out. The kid was using a geodude and a onyx as his pair. This was a step out of the kiddie pool and right into some one trying to beat you for your lunch money. How the hell was this a first badge challenge was beyond me.
Unlike his brother Salvadore did not hold back, and in the end I was the first one of my group to actually win, and it was on a lucky shot when Rose managed a critical hit on the rock snake.
On the plus side there was a pause between the second and third fight and I was allowed to use some potions. I only had a few of those and I needed to make them count, but after the beating Salvadore gave me, my team needed it.
In other good news my Turtwig had learned his first grass move, absorb.
Third match with Cindy was easier because of it, though I hated spamming the move, it was just enough to take out her geodude, onyx and graveler.
Using the last of my potions I walked into the arena to deal with the Gym Leader.
Brock. The man was as tall as I saw from his photos in the lobby. He was in his early twenties and looked like he bench pressed his onyx for fun. There was a rumor he had an elite team that had some rather rare pokemon including a Tyranatar, but I hadn't ever heard of him using it while I was alive.
There was also a rumor he was dating Gym Leader Sabrina, but that sort of gossip was more my mother's thing.
What I had found out about him from my research was, despite his placement as the first gym for a lot of new trainers, he was not to be underestimated. He would have three pokemon for me to deal with. There was always an Onyx on his team for first badge trainers, but the other two swapped and sometimes between matches.
He was also known to sometimes present the Boulder badge even if some one lost to him if he liked their showing.
I really didn't like the idea of a freebie, so I came in to win. I only had two pokemon to his three, and both of mine were tiring. Despite the offer of Oak to stable some Pokemon, I didn't feel like gathering a team I wasn't going to use. So I didn't bother with any bugs or birds that might be seen in the areas around the gym.
Sure there was nothing wrong with a rattatta and I'd heard of a trainer or two making one into a monster that took them to the four, but I had a plan and I was going to stick to it.
“Challenger Kaisur, please enter the pitch.” A voice called over the intercom.
“I let out a small sigh and advanced on to the field glancing up at the man standing on the other side of the field. He stood unmoving with his arms crossed over his chest staring down at me as I stepped onto the pitch, the pillar slowly raising up to put me even with him looking down over the field.
It was much the same as the old field out in the lobby, though the stones and sand covering it didn't seem as fancy or artistically maintained.
“So you're the first of this group to make it all the way through.” Brock stated with a small smirk.” I really need to tell Cindy and Forest to tone it down a little for the first badges. Though you did manage to hurt Emerald a little. So maybe that was the right amount of skill for you?”
Through it all he didn't move, simply stared at me. I frowned and quickly shifted, the stance he had was a intimidation tactic, or a pose so no one knew what he was going to do.
I rather liked the idea. Everyone else was constantly moving or shifting in battles, though Brock looked to be a stone.
“I'm just here for the badge, not an extra challenge.” I stated.
“Professor Oak sponsors you hours after you first meet him, you're the first to actually damage Emerald in a long time and you just want a normal match?” Brock asked. “Yeah, not happening.”
Shit.
“Still I'm not gonna call out my elite team, but I'm not going to use my first badge team either.” Brock called with a grin. “You've already got my interest and earned the badge in my eyes with the other matches. You have a good grasp of your pokemon's skills and understand enough to start using new tricks and combos. You called out the issue with the first geodude you saw as well, not to mention your claim about your cleffa.”
“I hardly think saying Rose is going to be on that champions pedistel is worthy of a badge.” I grumbled.
“It's not. But the rest is, for a first badge anyway. But you hardly seem the type to just accept that without a battle. So I'm going to see how you do against a second badge team. Same rules as the other matches. You can swap as need be I only get three pokemon and I can't switch. I don't get to use my second badge team as often as I like.”
I stared at him and huffed.
I pulled my ax from my belt leaving the covering on the ax head before I jabbed the butt of it against the floor in front of me, taking an at ease position with both my hands on the sheathed head as I stared across the field at him.
“Let's do it then.”
Brock grinned as a countdown started, a red LED on the wall at the edge of the field counting down from ten.
I noticed a few people in the stands as well, locals mostly, though Yolanda and Salvadore were there along with the girl who had been taken out in the first match. Salvadore was pointing out things to her, likely prepping her for a second attempt.
It wasn't a big crowd. Maybe fifteen or twenty people, but it was a start. The fact Brock was using a two badge team had perked some of their interest and a number of them seemed to focus more on me because of it.
I needed to be a bit more basic going after my second badge. I wanted to be known, but making things harder for myself was not in the plans. Plus now that I knew Claymore was out there I didn't want what I could do too widely known.
The timer clicked down.
Then it hit zero.
“TANK GO!”
I blinked at the name as both of us only moved our right arms to throw out a ball before readopting our chosen poses.
A small greenish mostly flat bug looking creature appeared on the field, two little black dot like eyes sat on top of the things body and four claw like legs sank into the sand.
My turtwig stared at the creature the leaves on it's head flicking.
Was this a bug type? A rock bug? That would be a bad type match up for Tank. I felt dread at the sight of the creature though. It took me a half second however to realize it wasn't dread of it being a type advantage.
It was the dread of a water type being nearby.
What the fuck? I flicked my gaze up to Brock, he might have looked back? I really didn't get how his family could see shit.
“Tank withdraw.” I called planning to armor up until I figured this thing out.
“Metriod, sand attack.” Brock called out.
I kept my face impassive he was going to go with status moves. That meant I couldn't have Tank turtle up for a bit otherwise he'd never be able to hit anything if Brock spammed the move. I would need to remember to do some blind fight training with my team in the future.
“Tank, Tackle, flip it over on it's back if you can.” I called out as Tank lunged at the creature squinting through the sand in his face.
“Metriod mud shot.” Brock called.
Tank managed to hit the thing and knock it back and almost flip it. As it was lifted I saw two glowing red orbs on the underside of it. The thing flipped back it's claws yanking dirt up from under the sand and splattering it all over Tank, the mud splattering my turtwig and making him look like he had rolled in a swamp.
How... oh, it was a water type... a rock water type, something with a double weakness to Tank's grass moves. He was trying to weaken him so any hits would miss. The mud shot and sand would slow Tank down and blind him allowing him to do as much damage as he could while not being easily hit by Tank's absorb.
How annoying, particularly as I didn't have a good counter unless Tank got a lucky shot.
“Absorb!” I called.
What?
The two orbs of light lashed out and both of them struck true, though Brock's pokemon got the shot off first. Both hit home and both Pokemon cried out even as they healed.
This would not do. Tank was slower now and fighting near blind. Sure he had the type advantage, but Brock's pokemon , whatever that thing was, was more trained, though it seemed Tank was pulling more from it than it was getting back. This might be a win if it was a move for move, but all it would take is one miss and Tank would be at a disadvantage given the trade off.
Well. I had a plan for this, though it was another thing I didn't want to reveal so early. But I never was one to just take a free win.
“Tank, Castle! Prep absorb.” I called letting him know what his piece was. Tank nodded and waited still blinking sand. The mud hadn't helped only making it gum up on his face.
Brock raised an eyebrow at the command with no effect.
“Metriod, evasive, hit absorb again.”
I watched the creature move, scuttling near silently through the sand. When it paused to attack I spoke again.
“Absorb,black Bishop, six.”
Tank turned his head firing the absorb to his left at an angle, it wasn't a direct hit, but Brock's pokemon was hit with the move before it's own absorb came back, sank shuddered though let out a small sigh of relief.
My training my team in chess wasn't a perfect thing. But they both knew the pieces and we had figured out a few things. Black meant left, white meant right, the piece I mentioned indicated an angle. Bishop would have them fire at about 30 degrees in that direction, high and low could be added depending on the location of the target. Tank was actually better at following the orders than Rose was, though given the cleffa was far more mobile than the turtwig it made sense.
Brock frowned, I was setting him into a war of attrition one that the typing was just not working in his favor, if he tried another move that would give Tank a chance to heal back more and being only a second badge team I didn't expect he had too many strong moves.
Brock called another absorb, though I did the same and the pair had another exchange of blows that made the odd thing look a little worse for wear, not that Tank was looking well either, though he was finally blinking the sand and mud from his eyes shaking it off rather than dodging around only snapping off a shot when I gave an order.
“Metriod return.” Brock called pulling back the odd pokemon after a nasty hit had it stagger.
“Brock has returned his Kabuto, it may no longer be fielded for this match.” the announcer said.
“Interesting. Did you know the typing or was absorb the only grass move your Turtwig knows?” Brock asked.
“Who's to say?” I offered back.
“Still chess moves. Not unheard of but rare in one as young as you are.” Brock smirked before tossing out another ball. “Typing won't always save you though. Kilauea go!”
“Tank withdraw.” I stated using the moment before the ball hit to have tank armor up again.
As the light cleared however I was quite confused, though a number of the crowd could be heard screaming in shock and awe.
It was a growlith. Though instead of the bright orange and spikey mane, this was a deep red with it's eyes partially hidden by the curls and swirls of a gray mane.
I thought this was a rock gym?
“Kilauea, Flame wheel.” Brock called.
Fuck.
“Tank dodge it and tackle!”
That wasn't to be, my turtwig was still slowed by mud clinging to him, though it wasn't enough to protect him as the whirling ball of flame the growlith had become slammed into him. I flinched quickly recalling Tank as the fire move blasted through what little health he had left after the trading of blows. I hoped that Tank wasn't too badly burned though I did glare at Brock.
“A fire type!? Seriously?” I snapped.
“Fire, Rock actually. Took some time to figure out how, but Kilauea is a good girl isn't she isn't she.” Brock cooed as the dog like pokemon hopped around excitedly as if trying to figure out if the good girl was her.
“Challenger Kaisur's turtwig is no longer able to battle. Trainer send out your next pokemon.” The announcer called, the crowd seemingly getting more interested.
“Rose go.” I tossed out my last pokeball. We were outnumbered, the growlith was fresh and there was still a third ball on Brock's belt that could be anything. I never looked up what he would use as a second badge team.
The cleffa appeared, took a look at me then at the growlith chasing it's own tail and huffed, drawing the attention of the dog who growled.
“Rose, play keep away and fairy punch.” I snapped and Rose started to move.
It was rather comical in a way watching the little pink pokemon flit around the battlefield crying out at the top of one of her bounding arcs and thrusting out her arm like she was punching the air. Brock was a bit confused as to what she was doing but seeing that his growlith twitched or yelped every time she did the move he quickly reacted, having his pokemon fire off ember and another flame wheel, but the speedy little puffball managed to avoid nearly every attack.
At the end the growlith didn't seem to do anything for a we moments aside from stare after the bouncing pink ball. Brock had whistled a pattern but I didn't know what it was. Still the growlith eventually fell due to the constant barrage of undodgeable punches from Rose.
The Cleffa landed and offered a bow and she fought to keep from panting after all that bouncing around.
“Brock's Growlith is no longer able to battle. Gym Leader please send out your next pokemon” the announcer said.
I smiled as I looked to Brock. Rose was tired but undamaged, though I was concerned what sort of thing his third pokemon would be.
Brock did not disappoint tossing out his last ball, the light flaring revealing a squat lizard like pokemon with a large head fin and green scales, a black eye stripe ran down from each angry looking red eye.
“Obsidian, Go!”
Another I didn't recognize. Was this a dragon type? That would make two bad typeings this match had shown. I doubted I could be that lucky.
“Rose, round two, repeat tactics.”
Rose huffed and started moving, flinging punches.
The little green creature simply stood there seemingly unbothered by the punches hitting it, it's red eyes following the cleffa as she circled.
Something was wrong here.
“Obsidian, Payback.” Brock stated flatly.
My eyes widened. A dark move.
“ROSE DODGE!”
Rose was in mid bounce when the green thing lept at her slamming into Rose.
She cried out from the hit bouncing across the field and crashing into the sand at the base of my pillar. I looked down as the cleffa lay there out cold from just one hit. Leer, the damn dog must have been using leer as it's last moves.
“Challenger Kaisur's Cleffa is unable to battle, the challenger has no more pokemon to battle. Gym Leader Brock is the winner.”
I stared down as the pillar started to lower returning Rose to her pokeball and watching as the green creature crossed it's arms and adopted the pose Brock had. The flash of light as it was returned to it's ball snapped my gaze up to Brock who was advancing across the field. I took a breath and walked out to meet him. I did not like losing, even with everything stacked against me like this.
We stopped facing each other and Brock stared down at me.
“Some rather interesting tactics you put out. I can see Professor Oak was right, you are interesting.” Brock held out his hand and I took it returning the hand shake.
“I've still a ways to go.”
“This is your first badge. I didn't expect this much.” Brock grinned taking his hand back. “I looked down at my hand and the Boulder Badge within it.
“I will want a rematch.” I grumbled.
“I'm looking forward to it, and I'll be sure to save a spot on the champions pillar for your Cleffa.” Brock chuckled.
I ran my tongue along the roof of my mouth pressing hard against it with my hand holding my nose shut as I tried to suppress the sneeze.
It worked but barely. I pulled my shirt up over my face to block the dust and continued to shimmy down the vent.
Now you may be asking yourself. 'Self. Why in Tartarus is he crawling through a vent in the dark and stirring up dust that likely hadn't seen a cleaning in decades?'
And i would of course respond with, because I'm an idiot who still thinks he's captain of the fucking Canterlot Royal Guard or a legendary hero and not a 10 year old with two pokemon and one badge to my name.
Alright let me back up.
After i got the Boulder Badge about a week ago, i set back off along the route to continue training and to check and see if the Viridian Gym had opened.
It had not. I decided to get a spot in the pokemon center trainer rooms for the night rather than go back out camping. I was probably going to have to circle back around to this Gym or hit what ever other one was promoted if Giovanni didn't reappear soon.
Around three in the morning I had to get up to take a piss, stupid child body with still developing bladder. Of course since this was a trainer room all that was in here was a desk and bed, the showers and bathrooms were a communal thing down the hall.
On the way back to my room after trying and failing to remain sleepy after walking across the building I stepped out onto the outdoor walk way that ran between the main center and the trainer rooms. I stretched a bit and taking a moment to try and clear my head. I figured I was up for the night at this point. I used to be able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, leaning against something, or standing in a parade formation. Knew a couple of stallions who could march and nap, never got that good.
Still thinking back as my time as a pony was a bit depressing. Mostly because of all I had seen and all those that died. Even thinking about Dawn's death slightly sent me in a downward depressive spiral.
Thankfully for my mental health I noticed a sudden silence.
When I stepped out the first time the Noctowls, Zubats and other pokemon in the night had stilled around the center, only going back to their noises and cries seeing that I stayed on the walkway and didn't do anything.
They had just stilled again.
I froze myself hearing what sounded like talking and boots on concrete.
Staying where I was i watched a pair of men heading down the road that ran next to the center, they were out a bit late, but then again so was I, and I was pretty sure there was a bar around here some where. I would LOVE a drink, but I was ten and needed to build up my resistance again.
They both wore jackets, black pants and seemed to be wearing flat caps and . At least as far as i could tell when they walked past the light cast by the pokemon center lobby.
"Damn. I would hit that." One of them whistled looking into the lobby not seeming to have really noticed me on the walkway, granted I was short and there were some shrubs between the road and the building, but I wasn't THAT short.
"Man you wouldn't even know what to say to her. This could be a game where you press A to talk and you'd still some how screw it up." His companion laughed.
It only took me a moment to realize they were talking about the Nurse Joy on duty.
I didn't see it personally, I liked mares, though pics of Ponytas and Rapidashs did nothing for me either. Either I was very picky after being with a goddess for so long or maybe I just needed to hit puberty again. Fuck that was going to be fun.
The men argued a bit and the second one shoved the first hard enough to make him stumble back into the light, his jacket flapping open showing the black shirt underneath.
And the stylized red R on his chest.
They bitched and argued continuing on, and I moved after them, in my Pajamas, with no ax, or pokemon.
Luckily they didn't go far, only to the gym, where they put in a code at the door and walked in like they owned the place.
Interesting.
The Gym leader hadn't been seen in quite a while, and at least one team rocket member, likely two, had just gone into the gym at three in the morning.
I should contact the Jennys or at least shoot a message to Professor Oak, but I needed more information. I returned to the center and started planning.
I checked over the Gym the next morning, fought a few trainers who were also there, lost a few, won a few, some of these kids were pretty good, but I came out ahead cash wise in my matches.
I also found a spot where I could climb onto the Gym's roof and after climbing a tree nearby I took note of the ventilation system on the roof. One far larger than the building likely needed.
No one batted an eye at my tree climbing either, probably thinking I was hunting bugs, not casing the joint.
I was no Rhede, but Luna and I had once robbed a Abyssinian museum that had a few Equestrian artifacts we wanted to return to Equestria.
We did pretty well too, getting past magical defenses and guard dogs , only to get caught on the way back out by an Abyssinian rent a cop. And that only happened because we forgot the damn cats could see in the dark. After that stealth became optional for the mission.
Most of the museum was left standing in the end too.
Twilight had not been happy with us.
I paused in my crawling in the vent to smirk at that memory. Annoying Princess Twilight was never as fun as pissing off Celestia, but it was close.
Rose stopped to look back at me curiously at the pause, her ears perking. I shook my head and she continued on peering out of various side vents as she passed them.
Getting down into the building from the roof had been easy. Open the side of the unit, flip the breaker, have Tank hold the big fan still, cut the breaker back on and slip down into the vents letting the fan start to spin again behind us. Air would continue to flow and if I needed to get out, I could always jam the vent from this side.
Leaving the fan running was something Rhede had taught me. Not exactly 'leave the fan running', mind you , but the idea of it.
Never give any sign that you were there. A fan that big pulling air into a building would alert a number of people if the air started getting stuffy.
It was one reason why I was glad when I reached the first junction. There were three vents leading off from it, one went into the building itself, but the other two kept going down.
I sent Rose ahead. She was to poke around the vent after I explained the concept of a stealth mission. The first vent she went down, she came back rather quickly and shook herself. She knew we were after Rockets, and she hadn't seen any that way. So she lead into the other route and I followed with tank holding my gear and bringing up the rear.
I was the biggest one in this group, if I got stuck Tank could pull me out and If Rose couldn't fit in a vent path it was way too small for me so she led the group.
Eventually the sloping vent dropped straight down and I easily slid down the inside of it.
Hands were very useful, never could have pulled this off with hooves. Climbing back up would be a bit , but it was doable.
The next junction went four ways though the vents were large enough for me to crouch in. Two of the ways were blocked by fans pulling air from the other two tunnels as well as the above vent. I expected the vents down here were just big circles with this set up.
Before I could decide on one I heard a pokemon cry from one of them. Looking that way and glancing to my partners, we started down that vent, moving a little quicker in the larger area, though there was still too much damn dust.
I slowed at the sound of voices and the various cries of pokemon. Frowning I worked to move quieter, though I noted that both Tank and Rose looked worried, both of them looking to me then each other as we advanced. I was curious what they were hearing.
Finally we stopped at a vent in the floor that looked down over a large warehouse like room. We had passed a few others, one lead to a bathroom, the next a conference room. Had to be a hell of a smell in most of those meetings particularly if the mess here had a taco day. The next couple were empty labs and up ahead I could see we had come back on the other side of the vent as I could see the fan again around the next tunnel.
Though the last few vents opened into this big room. Peering through the slates I could see a couple of people walking around, at least three, two of them were together gathered around a cage .
The room was full of those, cages of all sizes and in nearly all of them were pokemon. Some of them were curled up on themselves, some looked to have injuries, some just seemed defeated.
Others were pissed clawing at the bars and snarling at the Rockets walking around. One of the Rockets paused as a Poochyena snarled at him, the rocket jabbed a metal pole against the metal cage and sent a jolt of electricity through the bars shocking the shit out of the pokemon in it, as well as the ones on either side of the cage that was targeted.
The man laughed and kept walking leaving the Poochyena and the two other pokemon on either side of him whimpering.
I pulled out my Pokedex activating the camera feature and sent a text to Professor Oak along with a message about where I was.
I was planning to wait there until help got here.
I'm a crazed former unicorn combat monster, but the key word there is former. I'm currently a ten year old kid with starter pokemon. I'm not jumping into this.
See Celestia. I can show restraint.
Then I saw her.
In one cage there was a large egg shaped ball of pink. She was apart from the others and nearly directly under my position.
The Chansy was holding tight to a speckled egg, both her arms wrapped tight around it. There were marks covering her body, darker lines that looked like stripes in her pink coat.
Wait, those were not stripes.
The Chansy was heavily scarred as she stood in the cage, she whimpered, clinging tighter to the egg as two rockets approached it looking at the trapped pokemon.
"Still won't give up the egg huh?" one asked.
"Nah, and my goodness, we were so surprised! The damn Pokemon was holding an Egg! We didn't know how it got there, but the damn Pokemon had it.” The second grunt shrugged. “She's been in here for a few weeks, nothing close enough to breed her. Boss only keeps her around cause she heals other pokemon in the cages if they're too bad off. Can't sell Chansys, the Joys would notice that.”
"Huh kinda surprised he cares about healing them. You ever seen his Rapidash?"
"Fucking scary shit, but I've also never seen a more powerful one, so whatever training he's doing is nuts, but it works. That's not even counting his starter, probably the only one the boss cares about given he doesn't even make him go into his ball."
"Ehh what ever. The doc wants us to get the egg from her." the first shrugged. " So how bout it pinky gonna do this the hard way or the easy way?"
The Chansy hugged the egg tighter.
"Suit yourself." The rocket shrugged and jabbed the rod into the cage electrocuting the Chansy.
The pink pokemon screamed and thrashed doing everything she could to keep the egg from harm.
There was a moment where the pokemon was spasming that she looked directly at me. Bright green eyes full of pain, and compassion for the egg she was trying to protect.
Some thing clicked inside of me.
I knew those eyes, I had seen them quite often for years. I saw them for the last time at a Apple family reunion before she died. Killed by a monster that had lead me into a trap. It was my fault she had died like she did, her body only living long enough to give birth to her daughter, though her mind had long past.
“Velkorn.” I stated.
Then all I saw was red.
There was really only a short window of my life, where I felt content and happy, unworried about the future and glad of the now.
This of course didn't count when I was a little zebra foal following my mother around and learning medicine from her.
It certainly didn't count the time where my brother took over the Zebralands and waged war with the Ponies, though that was how I met my husband and several of my life long friends.
The time after that was wrought with strife and fighting between moments of peace as part of Luna's Royal Guard.
Starfall, Jer'rahd, Bleu, Rhede, and I followed her plans, were ready to make a better place of Equestria.
Then it all fell apart and we had to betray Luna in order to try and save her from the Nightmare she became.
We failed.
Rather than try and live in a world that would likely try and kill us on sight for being the Nightmare's Generals we chose to be frozen in stone, only to be awoken a thousand years later by a curious unicorn mare.
The chaos that followed that was almost as bad as what we left. We were forgiven by Luna for our betrayal and found a place in the new age.
The years after what would be called the War of Gods were the only time in my life where I was content and happy. I learned new medicines and healing techniques, finally married my love and had a lovely pair of twins colts. Fox and Wolf. We had another on the way when it all ended. I was visiting Lionheart and his wife Rarity looking in on their new foal, a cute little half dragon, when we were attacked.
I don't recall what happened after that, but I remember seeing Grace, and her looking sad, I briefly recall watching over the world and waiting for the others to join us before we left Equestria.
I also recall curb stomping Avianna with a bunch of other ghosts of those she had screwed over, but I only got a few good hits in.
I recall Luna and Jer'rahd finally joining us and the group setting off to Elysium.
Then I recall waking up and breaking out of an egg.
My body felt strange and as I opened my eyes my first sight was a massive pink egg like creature. One that cood and fretted over me like it was my mother.
Strangely it was.
The creature was called a Chancy it was part of a small flock of the pink creatures living in the wilds of, well, if I am being honest, I do not think I know where I was born at this time. The flock only knew of the place as the zone, and we were walled in to protect us.
There were a multitude of other creatures around in the Zone, ones that often times fought violently with each other, though never with any of the flock. In fact they would often stop if any Chancy told them too. The Chancy acted like something of medics to the mass of monsters that surrounded us. Everything in the Zone went out of their way not to antagonize any of us.
Save for strange two legged creatures wearing clothes that occasionally came through and tried to capture creatures with odd balls.
No one seemed concerned about this and some of the others of the flock other monsters seemed to seek out being captured.
I ignored it as I was always hidden away when these two legged things came through.
In time I was taught quite a bit more about the world from some of the older monsters that were around. We were called pokemon, the flock were all Chancy, well they called me a Happiny, and were notably regarded as healers to nearly all the wild pokemon.
I took to it well, my knowledge from being a zebra, not translating perfectly, particularly not with the variety of Pokemon types, but enough that I easily took in what the other Chancy taught me.
At one point my new mother gave me a small oval shaped stone to carry around. She wouldn't say why but told me to keep a hold of it at all times.
While I was tending a injured Tarous a few days later I was bathed in white light and felt a surge of energy. When it cleared I was a Chancy.
This of course annoyed the Tartarus out of me. Evolution does not work like that. But I had seen enough magic bullshit in my life to get over it quickly.
Of course as is my life, just when I am becoming content with my lot in it, it goes to shit.
A group of humans, the clothed two legged creatures, burst into the reserve and started grabbing anyone and every thing they could. They were different from the others that came though and threw odd balls unlike the ones others carried, they also all dressed in black, with a red sigal on their chest that I did not know the meaning of.
Every one scattered and the humans released other pokemon who attacked and tried to drive everyone into places they could be caught.
While trying to get a baby Kangaskan back to it's mother in the chaos I was hit by one of the balls they threw and sucked inside.
Inside was... stifling. I don't know how long I was in that ball, but it was too long. Unable to move or see, I could barely hear what was going on outside. When I was finally let out, it was into a cage.
I spent perhaps months, maybe years in that cage. The ones who had taken me called themselves Team Rocket, and I was kept in a warehouse where countless other pokemon were brought in. If any were injured or damaged I was told to heal them. If I refused, or was too slow these humans used whips or shock prods on me, my pink flesh was soon covered in scars as I was never allowed to heal myself and only sprayed with potions enough to keep me going.
If not for my skills at meditation and my time stuck as a stone, I would likely have gone mad.
One day I was given an egg by a pokemon I had never seen before, mother who had been caught trying to protect the egg, her wounds were far to much for me to heal and she died, though I managed to hide the egg for a time. To subject a child to this.... When they found I had it , the Rockets wanted the egg I refused, planning to do everything I could to protect it, a last stand.
I was whipped and prodded with shock sticks forced to listen to their taunts all the while.
It was then I heard the roar.
It was not unlike that of a dragon, something I had heard from several of those that had been captured here. It was a noise that had every other pokemon in the cages go silent and freeze in place. It was an unmistakable sound.
Pure unbridled rage.
The humans heard it as well, and they might have done something about it, though they were not given a chance as a heavy metal grate slammed into the face of the one that had been shocking me.
A figure dropped down from above having exited the vent, smaller than the other humans, though clearly better trained.
As the first recovered from the hit the others stared in shock. The newcomer however was moving the moment he touched the floor, a red miasma flowing over his body, making his skin look like it was made of crystal He had an ax in his hand as he moved, then the ax was digging into the belly of the stunned human, his guts spilling out over the floor in a flash of gore and splatter of hot blood.
The other Rockets reacted to that, though the other one by the cage went for the ball on his hip only to reel back as his face was smashed by a pink fist, as a tiny marshmallow of a pokemon dropped from the vent after the ax wielder.
This pokemon was not one I recognized, though it looked almost crystalline, the odd floating head of what looked to be a dragon made of crystal floated above it between it's ears.
The Rocket it had hit tried to rise only for another few pounds of it's fists to leave the mans face a savaged mess of broken bone and blood. I wasn't sure he was even breathing any more, and I was repulsed to find I did not care.
One of the others screamed as the sound of wind whipped through the air, another pokemon stood in the vent, turtle in shape with a leaf on it's head, it too looked crystalline with a dragon head floating over it's head. Razor sharp leaves shot out from around it tearing into several of the Rockets on other sides of the cages, slicing them apart like my love's daggers used to in my past life.
I stared, my head snapping back as another gurgling scream drew my attention back to the human with the ax. Another of the Rockets had managed to release an Ekans, and the short human cut right through it with his weapon and drove the blade into the mans chest, bisecting the red mark on his shirt and going half way through his rib cage.
The human kicked the corpse off his ax, his head whipping around looking for any other targets. Seeing nothing his head turned to look at me.
Amber hair in a mess of a mop covered his head, he wore what looked like well worn traveling clothing and he was splattered with the blood of those he had killed.
His breathing was labored and his mouth open showing off clear fangs.
One of his eyes was a bright green, filled with rage.
The other was a glowing red orb of pure malevolence.
I knew who this was immediately.
[“ Do not resist, you are being saved! Please assume the 'Oh Arucus no, please don't kill' me position to signify your acknowledgment of this statement!”] The pink creature with this human shouted as she landed between the two of us.
[“Jer'rahd.”] I muttered.
The Pink creature looked between me and the human then nodded with a smirk.
[“Ahh good. You've heard of us.”] Rose nodded sagely.
I sat back against the wall next to the open door of a closet I had thrown everything out of, resting my head against the stone holding my poke-dex up and scanning some of the poke-mon as I spotted them, the range on the device for scanning was pretty good.
Rose stood before me with Tank, both of them were positioned between me and the mass of cops and Jenny's running around. There were a number of Joys out in the warehouse somewhere too, treating poke-mon and looking everything over. I was also pretty sure that at least two of those here were high ranked Rangers.
The main reason my poke-mon were still out wasn't so much to guard me, though Rose had looked ready to throw down with the pissed off Jenny that had tried to start some shit. One of the Rangers had come over and run her off, taking a look at me and my freshly cleaned ax and commented very loudly about how I was lucky the wild poke-mon that took out the Rockets didn't get me. He offered a nod to me and walked off after that declaration.
The Jenny didn't bother me again.
But it wasn't me Rose and Tank were guarding, it was the scarred Chancy that was sitting in the small closet I was in front of. She was asleep at the moment and I was content to let her do so for as long as she wanted.
I had a ton of questions for her, but at the moment making sure Velkorn was alright was the priority.
One of the Joys had come over and was going to put her in a ball to check her out easier and I told her not to. That started another argument that Rose and Tank got into as well. Rose actually convinced the Joy's own Chancy and she pulled the Joy off to tend others.
Granted I was waiting for someone in particular, and I didn't have to wait long.
“This is a mess you know?” Professor Oak sighed looking out at the rows of cages. “Six dead, a reported 'wild' poke-mon on the loose as the killer, a number of poke-mon and humans killed as well. One of them eaten by a Sneasel that managed to drag the body into it's cage.”
“It will take time for all of them to recover. Some may never do so from something like this.” I offered back.” This was torture, pure and simple. Not the first time I've seen something like this. Not the first time I've dealt with it either.”
“You're currently ten.” Oak pointed out as I shrugged and Oak sighed looking at a data pad he held.
“A number of them are stolen. We have their registration, sadly it seems a few of their owners were killed and the poke-mon might be going to next of kin. I looked over the notes as I was coming in. “Oak grumbled. “You are lucky you are 'just' ten. No one will believe you did this on your own. If this sort of thing happens again though.... So what did happen?”
I looked up at Professor Oak and held my hand out to the side towards the sleeping Chancy in the room next to me.
“Professor Oak, meet Velkorn. “ I stated simply. “She is one of the ones I am looking for.”
Oak turned his head looking at the Chancy. His eyes trailed over the scars on her, the egg she was cradling, as well as the fresh burn marks from a shock prod she had on her body in multiple points that were blistering up.
“Well fuck.” Oak sighed.
“Yup.” I offered reaching out to rub Rose's head getting a indignant chirp from her. Tank inched closer to me for his own pets which he received. ”If there are any of these poke-mon that would otherwise be destroyed, like that one who ate part of one of the Rockets, I'd like to use the stable space you gave me to house them instead. They've been through enough shit. They shouldn't be killed for being forced into this and not knowing any better.”
“I wouldn't worry about that. There are trainers and breeders out there who already deal with things like this. You don't have to use your space. We rarely need to put down any poke-mon unless they are an absolute danger or actively hunt humans and even then it's a last resort if relocation doesn't work, given the state of the ones I've seen here the sneasel was likely starved and saw a corpse as the first meal it had seen in probably weeks. Most of the time poke-mon like that where with a bad trainer first and were just tossed away.” Oak offered before nodding. ”It does look good on you to suggest that. I'm surprised you are not looking to capture one of them to train, there are some rather rare poke-mon here that are not stolen.”
“I've scanned most of them, but like I said, they are all traumatized, and I'm not going to capture Velkorn either. I'd rather keep her out of a poke-ball as well. Though if she wants to come with me... is there a way to do that? Like a therapy poke-mon maybe?”
“Hmm, there's a number of things I can do for something like that so don't worry. “Oak looked at the sleeping Chancy and tilted his head. “She's got an egg too, but that's not a Chancy egg.”
“You can tell?”
“Not with 100% accuracy. But close enough to know that is neither a Fairy nor a Normal egg. I could tell more with the right equipment, but I'd bet it was a ground or electric.... maybe steel type egg.” Oak shrugged. “I've got to check up with those looking through the rest of the gym. Giovanni's not here at any rate and given the state of the upper floors he hasn't been here in a while, likely since he was last seen months ago. “
“How does a Gym leader go missing for that long without notice?”
“Off season mostly. Some of the Gym Leaders take a few months off before the next season starts. Giovanni closed down his gym at the end of the last season and hasn't been seen since. Brock does something similar vanishing into the mountains on the off season. Knowing that boy he's probably still looking for his fathers killer.“ Oak hummed. “I'll have to talk to the league about it. See what gym they can lift up for this circuit, luckily they still have a bit of time to find a replacement for the circuit. Giovanni always preferred to not let anyone face him unless they had 7 badges so he was always considered the last gym most faced.”
I nodded at that and turned my head watching the goings on in the warehouse as Oak walked off.
I glanced over to Velkorn and sighed. I knew it was her, without a shadow of a doubt I knew it was Velkorn. When I let her out of the cage she seemed to recognize me immediately though she kept her distance.
What had happened to her after she died. I was still filled with regret about her death. The damn bastard had taken all my power, and used it to kill my friends and countless others. Including Velkorn.
I had been gone as she took her last breath as her daughter was cut from her. Luna and I had raised Rynthia as out own. With both Velkorn and Rhede dead we had to do our best to raise her right, and I think we did okay, but I had no idea if Velkorn would think the same.
Rynthia.. Rynthia was not a peaceful foal. She took too much after myself and Luna. That she wound up with the Element of Magic rather than Compassion like her mother or Generosity like her father spoke of that. She did not follow the path of pacifism like her mother did. Rynthia had believed that if there was an arrow wound, you did not heal around the wound and hope it cured the arrow still in the leg, you ripped out the arrow, used it to take out the one who fired it, then healed the wound.
Not the best analogy, but well, I was never good at those.
My phone started to ring and I looked down at it curiously and winced.
My parents were calling? Why were they calling me this late...
I snapped my head around and spotted the Jenny who had been harassing me, and the smirk on her face as she met my eyes.
Oh that bitch.
By the time my mother had stopped her screaming, my father had finished reprimanding me for going in, my grandmother had stopped asking questions and telling the others to shut up, and my grandfather had stopped his cackling, it was 3 in the morning.
Oak had come though and gotten me a pass for Velkorn to remain out of a ball. She was still required to be registered to a ball I would carry, but the star ball was a rare variation of a standard ball that was designed for service poke-mon. She wouldn't be allowed to fight in the circuit, but she also would not count towards my six ball limit and most places wouldn't require her to stay in the ball when traveling.
It became fairly clear that Velkorn did not want to be separated from me after she woke. I returned Rose and Tank and the two of us walked to the Poke-center and my room there. She refused to return to her ball to be healed at the center so I used a few sprays on her, the scarring that made her look striped barely faded, but at least the blisters from the shock prod were gone.
She also ate whatever the the nurse Chancy brought to her before she passed out again.
I let her have the small rooms bed and used the chairs in the room putting them together to sleep there.
I had slept in worse places for worse reasons.
The next day I explained everything to her as best I could, the language barrier was a bit much as she had never learned human, I couldn't speak poke-mon, and neither of us had the vocal capability to speak Equiss.
However with a notepad and a marker for her, we both could still write in Equestrian. And if any one ever saw the notebooks, it would take them years to decipher the words written there without one of us or a primer. Probably longer with my atrocious hoof writing, something that had not changed even though I had hands now.
Needless to say after explaining everything and answering her questions my hand was cramped all to hell.
Thankfully she seemed alright with us raising Rynthia, though she also knew things I didn't think she could have. Seems she and the others had been watching from the stars after all.
Guess that wasn't just an old foals tale.
Her story wasn't too different from mine. She was born to a small flock of Chancy out on some plains somewhere. She wasn't sure where and hadn't even seen a human until much later in her life.
She had evolved from a Happiny to a Chancy out there and had easily fallen into old habits as the Chancy were often sought out to be healed by the local wild poke-mon.
About a year ago she had her first encounter with humans, poachers who had captured - her entire flock as well as anything else they could in the area.
She lost track of the places she had ended up before appearing at the warehouse, being beaten and tormented to make sure she would heal what they told her to and produce powerful Chancy eggs, the power up not actual eggs thankfully.
She had been stuck there until I showed up, having been given the egg she held by a poke-mon who came in a little under a month ago.
Velkorn wasn't sure what kind of poke-mon it was, just that it was big and tough enough to die before it broke.
Rose seemed rather interested in how the two of us knew each other and I decided to let Velkorn explain it to Rose and Tank.
Tank simply accepted it. He was a rather chill guy after all.
Rose spent a lot of time yelling at me, not that I could understand her. Velkorn mentioned it was a trust issue and I simply pointed out to my little puff ball that how was I supposed to explain it without a translator.
That didn't mollify her much but some ear scritches did.
Velkorn wasn't really thrilled about the poke-mon being forced to fight, though what ever Rose told her seemed to calm her down a little. With Rose and Tank actually wanting to fight Velkorn really couldn't complain as much as she probably wanted to about me using training them to battle. She was annoyed at how young they were.
She was also annoyed to learn I was only ten by the human metric.
The next few days were filled with that sort of thing. The cops popping in to ask questions, Velkorn asking questions, and my parents calling to yell at me some more.
Honestly it reminded me of a lot of the after action reports I gave to Celestia back in the day.
About a week later I finally got to head out again with a bump up to my monthly stipend, a few bounties and lost poke-mon rewards payed to me, and a Earth Badge.
I was not happy with how I got my second badge.
Oak had scrounged up a trainer named Karen to run Giovanni's gym for the start of this circuit.
The girl was a Dark type trainer and a skilled battler as she was high on the ace circuit, and had been trained by Elite Four's Agatha before she retired. Sadly she had no idea how to deal with a second badge trainer and underestimated me fully to get swept by Rose without me really needing to do anything complex.
I explained how I wasn't happy to be practically given the badge, but she told me to take it anyway, as she had learned some things, and given all I had already done here that nearly any gym leader wouldn't have even accepted my challenge and just given me the badge for breaking up the smuggling ring.
I still protested until Rose walked up and took the badge from her and forced it into my hands with a huff.
Seems my poke-mon were okay with an easy win.
I doubled her training afterwards.
I needed to go all the way to the top to find the others, there was no room for being lazy.
With Virideon City behind me, I set out to my next destination to Cerul.... Saffron City... yes we will go there first..... not the water place.
Soon though.....
Maybe.....
